Microarray technology in pediatric malignancies: an insight towards individualized therapy

Abstract

Accurate and rapid diagnosis, prognostication and monitoring of malignancy are essential for development of curative chemotherapy. Microarrays are such technology which promises to monitor many biological samples at the whole genome or transcriptome scale on a single chip. This technique is becoming increasingly useful in molecular biology and in medicine. Microarrays are the most popular technique for gene expression profiling (GEP). The main purpose of GEP is to finding groups of genes with similar expression patterns and groups of samples with similarly expressed genes. In studies of acute leukemias, it is possible to correlate the expression of over 30,000 genes with a number of specific leukemic features including hematopoietic lineage, immunophenotype and cytogenetics. Microarrays are useful in diagnosis, classify, monitor response to treatment response to chemotherapy, minimal residual disease and clinical outcomes such as metastasis, recurrence, survival or second malignancies. Gene expression profiling can be helpful in addition to conventional techniques. Microarray technology could improve the current procedures for diagnosis and risk assessment in pediatric cancer. A key goal in cancer research is to identify the total complement of genetic and epigenetic alterations that contribute to tumorigenesis. We are currently witnessing the rapid evolution and convergence of multiple genome-wide platforms that are making this goal a reality. These approaches have identified abnormalities in key pathways, including lymphoid differentiation, cell cycle regulation, tumor suppression, and drug responsiveness.