Gene expression profiles of human endometrial cancer samples using a cDNA-expression array technique: assessment of an analysis method

The recently developed cDNA expression array technique can be used to gener ate gene-expression fingerprints of tumour specimens. To gain insight into molecular mechanisms involved in the development and progression of cancer, this cDNA expression array technique could be a useful tool, however, no e stablished methods for interpreting the results are yet available, We used the Atlas cancer cDNA expression array (Clontech, USA) for analysing total RNA isolated from four human endometrial carcinoma samples (two cell-lines and two tissue samples), one benign endometrial tissue sample and a human b reast cancer cell-line, in order to develop a method for analysing the arra y data. The obtained gene-expression profiles were highly reproducible, XY- scatterplots and regression analysis of the logarithmic transformed data pr ovided a practical method to analyse the data without the need of preceding normalization. Three genes (Decorin, TIMP3 and Cyclin D1) were identified to be differentially expressed between the benign endometrial tissue sample and the endometrial carcinoma samples (tissue and cell-lines). These three genes may potentially be involved in cancer progression. A higher degree o f similarity in gene-expression profile was found between the endometrial s amples (tissue and cell-lines) than between the endometrial samples and the breast cancer cell-line, which is indicative for an endometrial tissue-spe cific gene-expression profile. (C) 2000 Cancer Research Campaign.