Expression data from 17 patients with colorectal cancer

Colorectal cancer is a highly heterogeneous disease, with variable molecular pathogenesis, involving multiple genomic and epigenetic alterations. Despite the significant advances in the diagnosis and treatment of colorectal cancer, it remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality, especially for countries in Northern America and Europe, as also in New Zealand & Australia. In this direction, the introduction of gene expression signatures derived from multiple layers of molecular & clinical dissection, may resolve the problems of heterogeneity and improve robust disease stratification We used microarrays to monitor the global gene expression alterations of primary adenocarcinomas and matched normal samples from each patient, to unravel the critical biological processes that are involved in CRC progression A total of 17 patients with histologically confirmed colorectal adenocarcinomas were studied. The tissue specimens of the tumor and normal colon were removed during surgery and immediately frozen in liquid nitrogen. Total RNA was extracted for further processing with the affymetrix microarray platform HG-U133A. The patients assayed in this study are independent from those assayed in GSE110223.