Establishment of new diagnostic methods for character of cancer applicable to cancer therapy and diagnosis

肿瘤的诊断和治疗是根据临床分期和临床病理信息进行的。但即使是类似的癌症，对治疗和预后的敏感性也可能不尽相同。据认为，这一原因是由于在确定癌症治疗时难以充分认识“癌症的生物学特性”。为了解决这一问题，我们采用激光显微解剖和cDNA微阵列技术研究口腔鳞状细胞癌的基因表达谱。此外，为了利用该系统建立对癌症生物学特性的客观评价，我们考察了什么样的基因表达谱与癌症的生物学特性相对应。我们发现了几个在所有病例中上调或下调的基因，并明确了在转移阳性病例和转移阴性病例中表现出共同行为的基因。推测前一种基因是组织发生和侵袭/增殖能力获得的重要因素，后一种基因在肿瘤转移中起重要作用。这些基因被认为可作为判断肿瘤、肿瘤标志物和评估转移潜力的基础。另一方面，我们在有或没有转移的病例中显示了平均的基因表达谱。这些平均基因表达谱被认为揭示了“基因表达谱”的一部分，可以评估转移潜力，这是“癌症生物学特性”的重要组成部分。综上所述，该系统采用激光显微解剖和cDNA微阵列技术，有望为癌症的诊断和治疗以及提高癌症患者的生活质量做出贡献。

Cancer diagnosis and therapy has been done on the basis of clinical stage and clinico-pathological information. But sensitivity for therapy and prognosis may not be almost the same even if it is similar cancer. It is thought that this reason is caused by difficulty of recognizing adequate "biologic character of cancer" in determining cancer therapy. To enable "personalized medicine of cancer diagnosis and therapy" that can solve such a problem, we used laser microdissection and cDNA microarray to study gene expression profile of oral squamous cell carcinoma. Moreover, for the purpose of establishment of objective evaluation of biologic character of cancer with this system, we examined what kind of gene expression profile corresponded to biologic character of cancer. We identified several genes that up-or down-regulated in all cases and clarified genes which showed common behavior between metastasis positive cases and metastasis negative cases. It was suspected that former genes were important factor for histogenesis and acquisition of invasion / proliferation capability and latter genes played a large role in cancer metastasis. These genes are thought to have the applicability for a basis of judgment of cancer, tumor marker and evaluation of metastatic potential. On the other hand, we showed average gene expression profiles in cases with or without metastasis. These average gene expression profiles are thought to reveal a part of "the gene expression profile" that could evaluate metastatic potential which is important element of "biologic character of cancer"In conclusion, this system using laser microdissection and cDNA microarray may be expected to contribute to cancer diagnosis and therapy and improvement of quality of life of cancer patients.