Gene Expression Profiling for Cancer Targeted Therapy

Lung cancer is still the leading cause of cancer-related deaths and most of them are normally diagnosed in late stages, So there is an urgent need to establish reliable tools for the identification at early stages of the disease. In this study, we use an eleven gene signature test to examine lung biopsy specimens for diagnostic, prognostic & therapeutic purposes. Bronchoscopy was performed to collect 102 fresh frozen specimens from 51 patients. 32 lung tumors & their adjacent normal tissues were examined along with biopsy specimens. In all specimens, total RNAs were isolated & after generating cDNA, were used for qRT-PCR analysis. The results indicate that the expressions of 3 oncogenes Bcl-2, k-ras & h-ras were significantly high (p<0.05) in surgically removed tumors as well as biopsy specimens compare to adjacent normal tissues. The differential expressions of these 3 genes were strikingly higher in cigarette using patients than nonsmokers. Considering the overall results of this study, it can be concluded that, lung tissue abnormalities other than cancer could cause the elevation of some oncogene expression. This study also verifies that smoking can definitely cause oncogenic mutation, activation &/or amplification; which is now a globally proven fact.