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Cancer

Gene expression in diagnosis

Nature volume 403, pages 491–492 (2000)Cite this article

With advances in high-density DNA microarray technology, it has become possible to screen large numbers of genes to see whether or not they are active under various conditions. This is gene-expression profiling, and there has been an expectation that it will revolutionize cancer diagnosis ( Box 1)1,2. The thinking is that tumour behaviour is dictated by the expression of thousands of genes, and that micro-array analysis should allow that behaviour and the clinical consequences to be predicted. This rationale is sound enough, but until now it has not been substantiated by experiment.

On page 503 of this issue3, Alizadeh et al. deliver such substantiation. The particular cancer they have looked at is diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), a disease that takes in a clinically and morphologically varied group of tumours that affect the lymph system and blood. The authors carried out gene-expression profiling with a ‘Lymphochip’, a microarray carrying 18,000 clones of complementary DNA designed to monitor genes involved in normal and abnormal lymphocyte development.

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  1. Netherlands Cancer Institute , Plesmanlaan 121, Amsterdam , 1066 CX, The Netherlands

    Anton Berns

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  1. Anton Berns
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Correspondence to Anton Berns.

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Berns, A. Gene expression in diagnosis. Nature 403, 491–492 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35000684

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