[Exploitation of expression profiles: examples in oncology]

The analysis of biological processes has been revolutionized by the emergence of the DNA array technology. As cellular biological events are controlled by gene expression, their modulations are markers of the cellular activity. These modulations can be indicative of either a physiological process or a pathological one. Monitoring of the expression levels of thousands of genes simultaneously, the expression profiling method is based upon comparative studies where the identification of the differentially expressed genes in two samples is aimed. The two samples under study may be compared temporally or following drug treatment, they may also originate from different sources, e.g. normal versus pathological samples. In that case, gene expression profiling is conducted for diagnostics purposes or therapy monitoring, and offers an opportunity to identify new drug targets. Using different examples, we describe the potentialities of this approach in oncology.