Lung cancer remains a major health challenge in the world. Survival for patients with stage I disease ranges between 40-70%.

This suggests that a significant proportion of patients with stage I NSCLC may actually be under-staged.

Methods: In order to identify genes relevant for lung cancer development, we carried out cDNA array experiments employing 64 consecutive patients (58 men and 6 women) with a median age of 58 years and stage 1 or stage 2 non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Results: Basic cDNA array data identified 14 genes as differentially regulated in the two groups. Quantitative RT-PCR analysis confirmed an effective different transcriptional regulation of 8 out of 14 genes analyzed.