We have developed a comprehensive lung tissue microarray that included 300 NSCLC cases and 183 neuroendocrine tumors including small cell lung cancers, large cell neuroendocrine tumors, and carcinoid tumors. The availability of the patient survival information in a majority of the cases allowed us to systematically evaluate candidate protein markers for lung cancer diagnosis and prognosis. In a recent study, we showed that one of the core chromosome remodeling factors, BRM has prognostic value in NSCLC. Nuclear BRM (N-BRM) expression correlated with a better prognosis for both SqCa and AD with 5 year-survival of 53.5% vs. 32.3% (p=0.015). In contrast, membranous BRM (M-BRM) staining correlated with a poorer prognosis in AD with a 5 year-survival of 16.7% vs. 38.1% (p=0.016). In addition, collaboration with investigators within CCR has led to new discoveries regarding protein expression and survival such as AKT activation in NSCLC, Desmoglein 3 expression in carcinoid tumors as well as the discovery of previously unknown associations between interesting proteins, such as SMAD nuclear inducible protein 1 (SNIP1) and RB. We intend to use this unique resource to develop a comprehensive protein expression profile for lung cancer and anticipate that this unique resource will lead to many fruitful collaborations with researchers both inside and outside of NCI.
