Gene expression profiling of esophageal cancer: Comparative analysis of Barrett's esophagus, adenocarcinoma, and squamous cell carcinoma

Abstract

Esophageal cancer is a particularly aggressive tumor with poor prognosis, however, our current knowledge of the genes and pathways involved in tumorigenesis of the esophagus are limited. To obtain insight into the molecular processes underlying tumorigenesis of the esophagus, we have used cDNA microarrays to compare the gene expression profiles of 128 tissue samples representing the major histological subtypes of esophageal cancer (squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma (ADC)) as well as Barren's esophagus (BE), the precursor lesion to ADC, and normal esophageal epithelium. Linear discriminant analysis and unsupervised hierarchical clustering show the separation of samples into 4 distinc..