Transcriptomic molecular markers for screening human colon cancer in stool and tissue

There is a need for sensitive and specific diagnostic molecular markers that can be used to monitor early patterns of gene expression in non-invasive exfoliated colonocytes shed in the stool, and in situ in adenoma-carcinoma epithelium of the colon. RNA-based detection methods are more comprehensive than either DNA-, protein- or methylation-based screening methods. By routinely and systematically being able to perform quantitative gene expression studies on these samples using less than ten colon cancer genes selected by the enormous resources of the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Genome Anatomy Project, we were able to monitor changes at various stages in the neoplastic process, allowing for reliable diagnostic screening of colon cancer particularly at the early, pre- malignant stages. Although the expression of some of the genes tested in tissue showed less variability in normal or cancerous patients than in stool, the stool by itself is suitable for screening. Thus, a transcriptomic approach using stool or tissue samples