Gene Expression Profiling in Human High-Grade Astrocytomas.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Comparative and Functional Genomics Volume 2011, Article ID 245137, 10 pages doi:10.1155/2011/245137 Research Article Gene Expression Profiling in Human High-Grade Astrocytomas Zhongyu Liu,1 Zhiqiang Yao,2 Chao Li,3 Yicheng Lu,4 and Chunfang Gao1 1Anal-Colorectal Surgery Institute, No. 150 Central Hospital of PLA, Luoyang, Henan 471031, China 2 Department of Neurosurgery, No. 150 Central Hospital of PLA, Luoyang, Henan 471031, China 3 Division of Head and Neck Surgery, Sichuan Cancer Hospital, Chengdu 610041, China 4 Changzheng Hospital, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai 200003, China Correspondence should be addressed to Yicheng Lu, yangyisichuan@ and Chunfang Gao, gaochunfang2010@163.com Received 13 February 2011; Revised 8 April 2011; Accepted 18 April 2011 Academic Editor: Jacques Camonis Copyright © 2011 Zhongyu Liu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Diffuse astrocytoma of (WHO grade II) has a tendency to progress spontaneously to anaplastic astrocytoma (WHO grade III) and/or glioblastoma (WHO grade IV). However, the molecular basis of astrocytoma progression is still poorly understood. In current study, an essential initial step toward this goal is the establishment of the taxonomy of tumors on the basis of their gene expression profiles. We have used gene expression profiling, unsupervised (hierarchal cluster (HCL) and principal component analysis (PCA)) and supervised (prediction analysis for microarrays (PAM)) learning methods, to demonstrate the presence of three distinct gene expression signatures of astrocytomas (ACMs), which correspond