Specific diagnosis for effective treatment of neuroblastomas and pulmonary neuroendocrine tumors through transcriptional profiling-based interpretation of cellular development

Abstract

Induction of tumor differentiation through manipulation of regulatory genes is a relatively unexplored area of cancer therapy, however, it might suggest and additional approach for tumour-specific treatment. Therefore, in view of this idea, the present study hypothesized that neuroblastomas (NBs) and pulmonary neuroendocrine tumors (NETs), which are neoplasms of neural origin, are molecularly different based on their expression of regulatory genes and that exposure to extrinsic factors will alter their growth potential. Using reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis, the present study compared the expression of about 50 regulatory genes that are expressed at early stages of neurogenesis in five human NBs and NETs, also upon GDNF/TGF-β1 and retinoic acid (RA) treatment. According to our results, individual NBs and NETs reflected a certain stage of neural development characterized by their expression of discrete sets of regulatory genes.