Gene expression in fixed tissues and outcome in hepatocellular carcinoma

N Engl J Med. 2008 Nov 6;359(19):1995-2004. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa0804525. Epub 2008 Oct 15.

Abstract

Background: It is a challenge to identify patients who, after undergoing potentially curative treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma, are at greatest risk for recurrence. Such high-risk patients could receive novel interventional measures. An obstacle to the development of genome-based predictors of outcome in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma has been the lack of a means to carry out genomewide expression profiling of fixed, as opposed to frozen, tissue.

Methods: We aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of gene-expression profiling of more than 6000 human genes in formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissues. We applied the method to tissues from 307 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma, from four series of patients, to discover and validate a gene-expression signature associated with survival.

Results: The expression-profiling method for formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue was highly effective: samples from 90% of the patients yielded data of high quality, including samples that had been archived for more than 24 years. Gene-expression profiles of tumor tissue failed to yield a significant association with survival. In contrast, profiles of the surrounding nontumoral liver tissue were highly correlated with survival in a training set of tissue samples from 82 Japanese patients, and the signature was validated in tissues from an independent group of 225 patients from the United States and Europe (P=0.04).

Conclusions: We have demonstrated the feasibility of genomewide expression profiling of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissues and have shown that a reproducible gene-expression signature correlated with survival is present in liver tissue adjacent to the tumor in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Aged
  • Carcinoma, Hepatocellular / genetics*
  • Carcinoma, Hepatocellular / mortality
  • Carcinoma, Hepatocellular / pathology
  • Feasibility Studies
  • Female
  • Gene Expression Profiling / methods*
  • Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic
  • Genome-Wide Association Study
  • Humans
  • Liver / pathology
  • Liver Neoplasms / genetics*
  • Liver Neoplasms / mortality
  • Liver Neoplasms / pathology
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Multivariate Analysis
  • Neoplasm Recurrence, Local / genetics*
  • Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis / methods
  • Paraffin Embedding / methods
  • Polymerase Chain Reaction
  • Prognosis
  • Survival Analysis
  • Tissue Fixation / methods