BACKGROUNDPersonalized medicine becomes essential in lung cancer treatment, however lung-cancer-related gene expression profiles in Chinese patients remain unknown. In this study, the correlation of gene expression profiles and clinical characteristics in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) was investigated.

METHODSSeventy-six Chinese patients with NSCLC were enrolled in the study to investigate mRNA expression profiles of excision repair cross complement group 1 (ERCC1), thymidylate synthetase (TYMS), ribonucleotide reductase (RRM1), class III β-tubulin (TUBB3), and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) genes and their correlation with patient clinical characteristics. A novel liquidchip technology was used to detect mRNA expression levels in formalin fixed paraffin embedded tumor pathology samples. The relationships between gene expression and clinical characteristics were assessed using the Mann-Whitney test.

RESULTSERCC1 mRNA levels were higher in tumors from patients with metastatic disease than patients with non-metastatic disease (P = 0.021), and higher in adenocarcinomas than squamous cell carcinomas (P = 0.006). Increased TUBB3 mRNA expression levels were found in patients with performance status (PS) 1 in comparison with PS 0 (P = 0.049), with poorly differentiated tumors in comparison with tumors that were moderately and well differentiated (P ≤ 0.000 1), and with advanced stage in comparison with early stage disease (P ≤ 0.000 1).

CONCLUSIONSERCC1 mRNA levels were higher in metastatic adenocarcinoma NSCLC; TUBB3 mRNA levels were significantly higher in poorly differentiated tumors and in advanced stage NSCLC, which indicates the poor prognosis.