A PANCREATIC CANCER-SPECIFIC EXPRESSION PROFILE

We present an approach making use of technology established in the con text of the genome project to describe a pancreatic cancer-specific ex pression profile and to identify new potential disease genes or diseas e-associated-genes, By use of gridded arrays of pancreatic cancer cDNA libraries and differential hybridizations we show that 4% the gridded cDNA library clones contain sequences preferentially expressed in pan creatic cancer. EST-sequencing of 369 distinct (408 total), differenti ally expressed sequences identified novel genes (32.5%) or homologs to EST-sequences with unknown function (26.3%). Homologies to known gene s allow to determine a pancreatic cancer-specific expression profile, which provides for the first time evidence for complex primary and sec ondary alterations of gene expression responsible for the development of the phenotype of pancreatic cancer cells. In addition this has led to the identification of novel differentially expressed genes, which r epresent potential oncogenes or disease-associated markers and may be helpful for the development of therapeutic or diagnostic modalities.