Molecular classification of carcinoma of unknown primary

原发性不明癌（CUP）是癌症死亡的第四大原因。这种情况的前景特别差，中位生存期不到一年。目前诊断CUP的方法包括组织病理学和复杂的成像。在大约40%的情况下，这些都是成功的。这种疾病预后差的原因通常是60%的CUP患者没有得到诊断，不能从专门针对特定肿瘤来源的化疗中获益。这些患者接受的是效果较差的普通化疗。该项目的目的是使用微阵列来识别许多已知肿瘤中的基因表达谱，以创建各种肿瘤类型的分子指纹。通过将CUP的指纹与数据库进行比较，我们应该能够识别CUP中的真实肿瘤类型，并允许患者从更特异性的化疗中获益。

Carcinoma of unknown primary (CUP) is the fourth largest cause of cancer death. The condition has a particularly poor outlook, with a median survival of less than one year. Current methods for diagnosis of CUP include histopathology and sophisticated imaging. These are successful in approximately 40% of cases. Frequently the reason for the poor outcome in this disease is that the 60% of patients with CUP for whom no diagnosis is made do not benefit from chemotherapy specifically designed for a particular tumour origin. These patients receive a less effective, generic, chemotherapy. The aim of this project is to use microarrays to identify the gene expression profile in many known tumours to create a molecular fingerprint of the various tumour types. By comparing the fingerprint from a CUP with the database we should be able to identify the true tumour type in CUP, and allow patients to benefit from more specific chemotherapy.