Expression data of Human Gastric Adenocarcinoma

Anatomical staging is a critical, although imperfect, instrument to assess gastric cancer prognosis and define indication for surgery and adjuvant therapy. Despite recent advances, treatment results, as a whole, remain less than satisfactory. Thus, biomarkers are sorely needed to improve risk categorization and define new molecular targets for therapy. We used microarrays to identify genes differentially expressed according to prognosis of the patients. A cohort of 15 patients was prospectively identified with a histological diagnosis of gastric adenocarcinoma, submitted to surgery with curative intent. Two prognostic patient groups were defined, according to overall survival (short x long), with a 24 month cut-off. These groups were matched by known prognostic factors: TNM staging, histological subtype (intestinal/diffuse) and gender.