The research may also discover new relationships between cancer genes, Meterissian said. A gene associated with colon cancer may also be shown to play a role in breast cancer. All of a sudden you may find new associations that were never identified before. Another marker in the study, called p53, was found to correlate with patients that would need more aggressive chemotherapy. Hundreds of molecular markers like p53 and bcl-2 could be identified by the biochip microarray within the next five or six years, according to Meterissian.
Biochips have multiple potential uses in medicine, including drug development.
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