Cancer diagnostic panel

#The invention relates to the selection of portfolios of diagnostic markers.

#A few single gene diagnostic markers such as her-2-neu are currently in use. Usually, however, diseases are not easily diagnosed with molecular diagnostics for one particular gene. Multiple markers are often required and the number of such markers that may be included in a assay based on differential gene modulation can be large, even in the hundreds of genes. It is desirable to group markers into portfolios so that the most reliable results are obtained using the smallest number of markers necessary to obtain such a result. This is particularly true in assays that contain multiple steps such as nucleic acid amplification steps.

#The invention is a method of cancer by identifying differential modulation of each gene (relative to the expression of the same genes in a normal population) in a combination of genes selected from the group consisting of Seq. ID. No. 1-30, Seq. ID No. 32, Seq. ID No. 34 and Seq. ID No. 98. In another embodiment the combination is selected from the group consisting of Seq. ID No. 32-67, Seq. ID No. 69, and Seq ID. No. 98-100.

#Producing an Optimized Portfolio

#Gene expression data was recently produced from tissue samples representative of eleven different types of cancers. The data was published in Cancer Research 61: 7388-7393, 2001 and http://carrier.gnf.org/welsh/epican/. See, Andrew I. Su et al., “Molecular Classification of Human Carcinomas by Use of Gene Expression Signatures.” The data included intensity measurements obtained with the use of an “U95” a oligonucleotide microarray (commercially available from Affymetrix, Inc.).

#Measurements of the expression of genes from the published data (fluorescent intensity measurements) was used to select optimum gene expression portfolios for a panel of markers to determine whether a circulating cell is indicative of the presence of breast cancer, prostate cancer, ovarian cancer, colorectal cancer, or lung cancer. Such circulating cells would preferably be epithelial cells.