1. ¹Department of Pathology, 134 Sichon-dong, Seodaemun-gu, CPO Box 8044, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, 120-752, Korea
2. ²Brain Korea 21 Projects for Medical Sciences, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, 120-752, Korea
3. ³Cancer Metastasis Research Center, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, 120-752, Korea
4. ⁴Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 137-710, Korea
5. ⁵Department of Surgery, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, 120-752, Korea
6. ⁶Yonsei Cancer Center, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, 120-752, Korea
7. ⁷Genome Institute of Singapore 138672, Singapore

Correspondence: H Kim, Department of Pathology, Yonsei University College of Medicine, 134 Sichon-dong, Seodaemun-gu, CPO Box 8044, Seoul 120-752, Korea. E-mail: hkyonsei@yumc.yonsei.ac.kr

⁸These authors contributed equally to this work

Received 15 June 2004; Revised 16 September 2004; Accepted 29 October 2004; Published online 27 December 2004.

Abstract

Activating mutations of KIT and platelet-derived growth factor receptor (PDGFRA) are known to be alternative and mutually exclusive genetic events in the development of gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs). We examined the effect of the mutations of these two genes on the gene expression profile of 22 GISTs using the oligonucleotide microarray. Mutations of KIT and PDGFRA were found in 17 cases and three cases, respectively. The remaining two cases had no detectable mutations in either gene. The mutation status of KIT and PDGFRA was directly related to the expression levels of activated KIT and PDGFRA, and was also related to the different expression levels of activated proteins that play key roles in the downstream of the receptor tyrosine kinase III family. To evaluate the impact of mutation status and the importance of the type of mutation in gene expression and clinical features, microarray-derived data from 22 GISTs were interpreted using a principal component analysis (PCA). Three relevant principal component representing mutation of KIT, PDGFRA and chromosome 14q deletion were identified from the interpretation of the oligonucleotide microarray data with PCA. After supervised analysis, there was at least a two fold difference in expression between GISTs with KIT and PDGFRA mutation in 70 genes. Our findings demonstrate that mutations of KIT and PDGFRA affect differential activation and expression of some genes, and can be used for the molecular classification of GISTs.