FISH AND CHIPS--SINGLE CELL EXPRESSION OF CANCER GENES

The purpose of this proposal is to develop innovative strategies for the detection of multiple gene targets in single tumorous cells. The strategy is to use multicolored detection derived from oligonucleotide probes and combined with deconvolution imaging microscopy to use the entire nucleus of the cell as a chip to display hundreds of gene expression targets. The procedure will then be applied to a colorectal cancer cell model first using human cell lines and proceeding to mouse and eventually human tissue. The benefits of this approach are that many genes can be interrogated for their level of expression in every cell within a tissue, thereby deriving important prognostic and diagnostic information from a single probe cocktail.