Revisiting Microarrays

Revisiting Microarrays Regarding the articles on microarrays,1-3 Pat Brown and the group at Stanford deserve great recognition for their technological innovations that led to widespread use of microarray analysis in biomedical research. However, the concept of computerized gene expression profiling, its reduction to practice, and enumeration of its potential in many areas of disease diagnosis, prognosis, drug sensitivity, and investigation of underlying mechanism has a much longer history. Use of defined arrays for expression analysis of each of 400 sequences to characterize mouse tumors was published in 1982,4 leading to the observation that expression of one class of endogenous retroviral sequences was cell cycle-linked. 5-7 This was followed in 1987 by development of computerized quantification of gene expression for arrays of 4,000 genes8 and followed up in 1991.9 This led to the identification of a role of mitochondrial function in tumor formation, well before involvement of mitochondria in apoptosis was understood.10,11 Finally, our patent on use of arrays for cancer diagnosis and prognosis,12 as well as a number of review articles by us during the mid-to-late 1980s, detailed the use of gene expression profiling for diagnosis, prognosis, drug sensitivity, and prediction of metastases, among other clinical issues. Science and Nature rejected this early work, essentially because the value of such expression profiling was unclear, the genes were anonymous at the time (i.e., they were expressed sequence tags [ESTs], but before the term had been coined), and the approach did not fit into the focus in the literature on mutation of specific protoonc [proto-oncogene] sequences. Leonard Augenlicht, PhD Professor, Medicine and Cell Biology Albert Einstein College of Medicine augen@aecom.yu.edu References 1. R.Gallagher, "Microarrays R us - for the moment," The Scientist, 17[16]:9, Aug. 25, 2003. 2. M. Schena, "The first array," The Scientist, 17[16]:18, Aug. 25, 2003. 3. E. Garfield, S. Paris, "The microarray family tree," The Scientist, 17[16]:29, Aug. 25, 2003. 4. L.H. Augenlicht, D. Kobrin, "Cloning and screening of sequences expressed in a mouse colon tumor," Cancer Res, 42:1088-93, 1982. 5. L.H. Augenlicht et al., "Elevated expression of an endogenous retroviral long terminal repeat in a mouse colon tumor," J Biol Chem, 259:1842-7, 1984. 6. M.E. Royston, L.H. Augenlicht, "Biotinated probe containing a long-terminal repeat hybridized to a mouse colon tumor and normal tissue," Science, 222:1339-41, 1983. 7. L.H. Augenlicht, H. Halsey, "Expression of a mouse long terminal repeat is cell cycle-linked," Proc Nat Acad Sci, 82:1946-9, 1985. 8. L.H. Augenlicht et al., "Expression of cloned sequences in biopsies of human colonic tissue and in colonic carcinoma cells induced to differentiate in vitro," Cancer Res, 47:6017-21, 1987. 9. L.H. Augenlicht et al., "Patterns of gene expression that characterize the colonic mucosa in patients at genetic risk for colonic cancer," Proc Natl Acad Sci, 88:3286-9, 1991. 10. B.G. Heerdt et al., "Mitochondrial membrane potential in the coordination of p53-independent proliferation and apoptosis pathways in human colonic carcinoma cells," Cancer Res, 58:2869-75, 1998. 11. L.H. Augenlicht, B.G. Heerdt, "Mitochondria: integrators in tumorigenesis?" Nat Genet, 28:104-5, 2001. 12. L.H. Augenlicht, "Method for detecting pathological conditions," US patent 4,981,783, issued Jan. 1, 1991. function sendData() { document.frm.pathName.value = location.pathname; result = false if (document.frm.score[0].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[1].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[2].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[3].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[4].checked) result = true; if (!result) alert("Please select") return result; } .myradio{background-color : #94bee5} Please indicate on a 1 - 5 scale how strongly you would recommend this article to your colleagues? Not recommended 1 2 3 4 5 Highly recommended Please register your vote

Revisiting Microarrays

Revisiting Microarrays

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