Molecular typing of breast cancer: transcriptomics and DNA microarrays

Breast cancer is the most frequent and deadly cancer of women. Its great he terogeneity makes prognosis and response to current treatments highly varia ble and difficult to predict. Mammary oncogenesis remains poorly understood . These issues should benefit to om recent development of techniques capabl e of large-scale molecular analyses. The use of cDNA array techniques allow s for the simultaneous analysis of the mRNA expression levels of thousands of genes in mammary tumor cell lines and breast tumors. Expression profiles will help classify tumors and provide new prognostic tools and potential t herapeutic targets. They will also boost our knowledge of the molecular eve nts responsible for the development and progression of this cancer.