Gene expression profiles in lung cancer using cDNA array

吸烟是导致肺癌的主要原因。然而，只有一小部分吸烟者会患上肺癌。此外，越来越多从不吸烟的患者也患上了肺癌。对于那些从不吸烟的人来说，肺癌的原因尚不清楚。为了解决这个问题，我们与DCEG的Neil Caporaso博士和他的同事合作，并进行了广泛的分析，使用来自当前、过去和从不吸烟的患者的配对肺癌和正常样本来检查基因表达谱。对不同吸烟状态患者肺癌基因表达变化的分析表明，1)尽管临床上可以区分，但大多数不吸烟患者的肺癌很可能是通过与吸烟患者不同的分子机制发展起来的。2)过去吸烟者的肺癌在分子上与现在吸烟者的相似，很可能是由于吸烟造成的损害而发生的。我们观察到，在分子水平上，吸烟或不吸烟患者的肿瘤似乎涉及明显不同的分子途径。我们将研究重点放在与非吸烟患者肺癌独特相关的基因上，以确定这些肺癌的病因。我们还分析了候选基因的基因突变，以确定那些可能参与非吸烟患者肺癌发展的基因。

Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer. However, only a small portion of the patients who are smokers ever develop lung cancer. Furthermore, more and more patients who have never smoked also develop lung cancer. The cause of lung cancer for those who have never smoked is unknown. To address this question, we collaborated with Dr. Neil Caporaso and his colleagues at DCEG and performed extensive analysis to examine gene expression profiles using paired lung cancer and normal samples from patients who are current, past, and never smokers. Analysis of gene expression changes in lung tumors from patients with different smoking status revealed that 1) although clinically distinguishable, a majority of lung cancers from non-smoking patients most likely developed via a different molecular mechanism from those that developed from patients who had smoked. 2) Lung tumors from past smokers are molecularly similar to those of the current smokers and most likely have occurred as a result of the damages caused by smoking. We observed that at the molecular level, distinctly different molecular pathways appeared to be involved in tumors of smoking or nonsmoking patients. We are focusing our study on genes that are uniquely associated with lung tumors from non-smoking patients to determine the etiology of these lung cancers. We also analyse genetic mutations in candidate genes to identify those that might involved in the the development of lung cancer from non-smoking patients.