In 2000, two groups of researchers took a step towards establishing the clinical efficacy of gene expression profiling when they correlated that data with a clinical outcome in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and a phenotype in cutaneous malignant melanoma. For their analysis of melanoma samples, Jeffrey Trent, director of intramural research at the National Institutes of Health's National Human Genome Research Institute, and colleagues used a microarray containing 8,150 human cDNAs—representing 6,971 unique genes—from a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with Huntsville, Ala.-based ResGen, a subsidiary of Invitrogen Corp. of Carlsbad, Calif.1
In those days, there were a limited number of known genes to select from. "The first thing you want is genes that have a name and activity associated with them, because if one of those is indicated as important, you have something immediate to follow up on," says Michael Bittner, who is a coauthor on the paper. ...
