Patent ID: 8105777

Claim:
A method for classifying a human individual afflicted with colon cancer as having a good prognosis or a poor prognosis, where said good prognosis indicates that said individual is expected to have no distant metastasis within three years of initial diagnosis of colon cancer, and wherein said poor prognosis indicates that said individual is expected to have distant metastasis within three years of initial diagnosis of colon cancer, comprising: (i) calculating a first measure of similarity between a first expression profile, the first expression profile comprising the mRNA expression levels of a plurality of genes comprising at least five of the genes for which markers are listed in any of TABLES 1-5 in a colon cancer cell sample taken from the individual and a poor outcome template, wherein said poor outcome template comprises expression levels of said plurality of genes that are average mRNA expression levels of the respective genes in colon cancer cells of a plurality of colon cancer patients having distant metastasis within three years of initial diagnosis of colon cancer; and (ii) classifying said individual as having said poor prognosis if said first expression profile has a similarity to said poor outcome template that is above a predetermined threshold, or classifying said patient as having said good prognosis if said first expression profile has a similarity to said poor outcome template that is below a predetermined threshold; and (iii) displaying; or outputting to a user interface device, a computer-readable storage medium, or a local or remote computer system, the classification produced by said classifying step (ii).