Cancer diagnosis and microarrays

Microarray technology allows the investigation of the cell status on a molecular, genome-wide scale and has been shown to identify a given cell species by its gene expression profile. This may be highly valuable in future cancer diagnosis, because traditional clinical and pathological assessments of the tumour status cannot distinguish between morphologically similar but molecularly different tumours. These molecular differences, however are crucial in determining the clinical course of the disease. Despite this, in the majority of cases it has remained impossible to reliably characterise molecular phenotype and predict the response to therapy and the ultimate outcome for the patient. Microarray technology holds the potential to revolutionise the diagnosis and therapy of cancer. Recent developments in microarray technology and data analysis are discussed as well as examples of their application to define molecular phenotype. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.