Predicting outcomes for children with neuroblastoma using a multigene-expression signature: a retrospective SIOPEN/COG/GPOH study

Summary Background More accurate prognostic assessment of patients with neuroblastoma is required to better inform the choice of risk-related therapy. The aim of this study is to develop and validate a gene-expression signature to improve outcome prediction. Methods 59 genes were selected using an innovative data-mining strategy, and were profiled in the largest neuroblastoma patient series (n=579) to date using real-time quantitative PCR starting from only 20 ng of RNA. A multigene-expression signature was built using 30 training samples, tested on 313 test samples, and subsequently validated in a blind study on an independent set of 236 tumours. Findings The signature has a performance, s…