Patent ID: 7908089

Claim:
A method of preparing a biomap for the classification of a patient sample according to the physiological status of cells or constituents present in the sample, the method comprising: contacting a patient sample in a test cell culture with at least two factors acting on said cells in an amount and incubating for a time sufficient to induce a plurality of pathways active in said cell culture; recording changes in at least two parameter readouts associated with said plurality of pathways; deriving a biomap from said changes in parameter readouts, wherein said biomap comprises data normalized to be a ratio of test to control data on the sample type under control conditions; and analyzing said biomap by a pattern recognition algorithm to quantify relatedness of said biomap to reference biomaps that include one or more of biomaps of normal cells, cells from similarly diseased tissue, or from cell lines with responses induced by assay combinations involving known pathway stimuli or inhibitors, wherein the presence or absence of relatedness to said reference biomaps provides a characterization of the physiological status of cells or constituents present in the sample.