Abstract
ABSTRACT
Identification of quantitative alterations in the gene expression during small cell lung cancer (SCLC), if sufficiently characterized, may result in novel molecular markers that may be useful in the diagnosis and treatment of human small cell lung cancer. The recently developed mRNA differential display technique has been used to identify differentially expressed sequence tags (EST), short complementary DNA fragments corresponding to mRNA that are differentially expressed in SCLC as compared with normal human bronchial epithelial cell lines as control. DNA sequencing followed by computer search against sequences present in Genbank and EMBL DNA databases indicated that one tag was novel and two had high homology with reported genes: the lissencephaly-1 gene involved in Miller-Dieker syndrome and human peptide-binding protein, which is a new member of the heat shock protein 70 (hsp70) family. Lissencephaly-1 gene maps to a region of chromosome 17p13.3, which has been found to be repeatedly deleted in SCLC. This is the first report, to our knowledge, on the tags of the genes differentially expressed between normal human bronchial epithelial and SCLC cells. Loss of their expression in SCLC could contribute to tumor formation or progression or both.
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