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Query: UMLS:C0476089 (endometrial cancer)
 11,379 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Gene microarray technology is highly effective in screening for differential gene expression and has hence become a popular tool in the molecular investigation of cancer. When applied to tumours, molecular characteristics may be correlated with clinical features such as response to chemotherapy. Exploitation of the huge amount of data generated by microarrays is difficult, however, and constitutes a major challenge in the advancement of this methodology. Independent component analysis (ICA), a modern statistical method, allows us to better understand data in such complex and noisy measurement environments. The technique has the potential to significantly increase the quality of the resulting data and improve the biological validity of subsequent analysis. We performed microarray experiments on 31 postmenopausal endometrial biopsies, comprising 11 benign and 20 malignant samples. We compared ICA to the established methods of principal component analysis (PCA), Cyber-T, and SAM. We show that ICA generated patterns that clearly characterized the malignant samples studied, in contrast to PCA. Moreover, ICA improved the biological validity of the genes identified as differentially expressed in endometrial carcinoma, compared to those found by Cyber-T and SAM. In particular, several genes involved in lipid metabolism that are differentially expressed in endometrial carcinoma were only found using this method. This report highlights the potential of ICA in the analysis of microarray data.
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PMID:Independent component analysis of microarray data in the study of endometrial cancer. 1524 1

Tamoxifen treatment for breast cancer increases proliferation of the endometrium, resulting in an enhanced prevalence of endometrial pathologies, including endometrial cancer. An exploratory study was performed to begin to understand the molecular mechanism of tamoxifen action in the endometrium. Gene-expression profiles were generated of endometrial samples of tamoxifen users and compared with matched controls. The pathological classification of samples from both groups included atrophic/inactive endometrium and endometrial polyps. Unsupervised clustering revealed that samples of tamoxifen users were, irrespective of pathological classification, fairly similar and consequently form a subgroup distinct from the matched controls. Using SAM analysis (a statistical method to select genes differentially expressed between groups), 256 differentially expressed genes were selected between the tamoxifen and control groups. Upon comparing these genes with oestrogen-regulated genes, identified under similar circumstances, 95% of the differentially expressed genes turned out to be tamoxifen-specific. Finally, construction of a gene-expression network of the differentially expressed genes revealed that 69 genes centred around five well-known genes: TP53, RELA, MYC, epidermal growth factor receptor and beta-catenin. This could indicate that these well-known genes, and the pathways in which they function, are important for tamoxifen-controlled proliferation of the endometrium.
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PMID:Tamoxifen treatment for breast cancer enforces a distinct gene-expression profile on the human endometrium: an exploratory study. 1632 41