Meta-Analysis and Meta-Review of Thyroid Cancer Gene Expression Profiling Studies Identifies Important Diagnostic Biomarkers

作者：Obi L. Griffith, Adrienne Melck, Steven J.M. Jones, Sam M. Wiseman · 发表于：Journal of Clinical Oncology · 年份：2006 · DOI：10.1200/jco.2006.06.7330 · 被引用次数：314 · 研究领域：Thyroid Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment、Ferroptosis and cancer prognosis、Thyroid Disorders and Treatments

PURPOSE: An estimated 4% to 7% of the population will develop a clinically significant thyroid nodule during their lifetime. In many cases, preoperative diagnoses by needle biopsy are inconclusive. Thus, there is a clear need for improved diagnostic tests to distinguish malignant from benign thyroid tumors. The recent development of high-throughput molecular analytic techniques should allow the rapid evaluation of new diagnostic markers. However, researchers are faced with an overwhelming number of potential markers from numerous thyroid cancer expression profiling studies. MATERIALS AND METHODS: To address this challenge, we have carried out a comprehensive meta-review of thyroid cancer biomarkers from 21 published studies. A gene ranking system that considers the number of comparisons in agreement, total number of samples, average fold-change and direction of change was devised. RESULTS: We have observed that genes are consistently reported by multiple studies at a highly significant rate (P < .05). Comparison with a meta-analysis of studies reprocessed from raw data showed strong concordance with our method. CONCLUSION: Our approach represents a useful method for identifying consistent gene expression markers when raw data are unavailable. A review of the top 12 candidates revealed well known thyroid cancer markers such as MET, TFF3, SERPINA1, TIMP1, FN1, and TPO as well as relatively novel or uncharacterized genes such as TGFA, QPCT, CRABP1, FCGBP, EPS8 and PROS1. These c...