%0 Journal Article
%T Applications of microarray technology in breast cancer research
%A Colin S Cooper
%J Breast Cancer Research
%D 2001
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/bcr291
%X The Human Genome Project, which is nearing completion, is expected to lead to the identification of up to 50,000 human genes. The key question now facing the cancer community is how to use information from this project for the benefit of cancer patients. One of the key technical platforms that has been developed to achieve this is microarray analysis. This review highlights the ways in which DNA microarray technology can be utilised in a wide range of approaches to aid drug discovery and development and to improve our understanding of the mechanism of cancer development. Where possible, the work will focus on breast cancer, but other cancers will be described to illustrate particular approaches that may be of relevance to breast cancer. Many new bioinformatics approaches are being developed to support the analysis of the large amount of data generated by microarray studies. It is not the intention of this review to focus on bioinformatics, however, as information on this important area can be obtained from a number of sources (see [1]).A microarray is an orderly arrangement of known or unknown DNA samples attached to a solid support. Each DNA spot on the microarray (called the probe) is usually less than 200 ¦ÌM in diameter and an entire array typically contains thousands of spots. Many different design formats are possible [2]. The probes attached to the solid support can be small oligonucleotides, cDNAs or genomic sequences. The array may be formatted by photolithographic synthesis of oligonucleotides in situ [3,4,5], or the DNA samples may be applied directly to the array surface by pins, nibs or inkjet technology [6,7,8]. Several distinct chemistries may be used to attach the probe to the surface, and hybridisation may be electronically controlled [9]. The target sequence hybridised to probes on the array may be radioactively or fluorescently labelled. Despite the large number of possible permutations, only a small number of formats are in common use.Filter array
%K drug discovery
%K genetic gains and losses
%K microarrays
%K microarray design
%K mutation detection
%K tumour classification
%U http://breast-cancer-research.com/content/3/3/158