Expression Data from human Lung tissue of Patients with Non Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC)

Lung cancers are a heterogeneous group of diseases with respect to biology and clinical behavior. Currently, diagnosis and classification are based on histological morphology and immunohistological methods for discrimination between two main histologic groups: small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) which account for 20% and 80% of lung carcinomas, respectively. NSCLCs, which are divided into the three major subtypes adenocarcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and dedifferentiated large cell carcinoma, show different characteristics such as the expression of certain keratins or production of mucin and lack of neuroedocrine differentiation. The molecular pathogenesis of lung cancer involves the accumulation of genetic und epigenetic alterations including the activation of proto-oncogenes and inactivation of tumor suppressor genes which are different for lung cancer subgroups. The development of microarray technologies opened up the possibility to quantify the expression of a large number of genes simultaneously in a given sample. There are several recent reports on expression profiling on lung cancers but the analysis interpretation of the results might be difficult because of the heterogeneity of cellular components. The methods used for sample selection and processing can have a strong influence on the expression values obtained through microarray profiling. Laser capture microdissection (LCM) provides higher specificity in the selection of target cells compared to traditional bulk tissue selection methods, but at an increased processing cost.

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Lin J, Marquardt G, Mullapudi N, Wang T, Han W, Shi M, Keller S, Zhu C, Locker J, Spivack SD