Colorectal cancer driver genes identified by patient specific comparison of cytogenetic microarray

Colorectal cancer (CRC), which has high prevalence in Saudi Arabia and worldwide, needs better understanding by exploiting the latest available cytogenetic microarrays. We used biopsy tissue from consenting colorectal cancer patients to extract DNA and carry out microarray analysis using a CytoScan HD platform from Affymetrix. Patient specific comparisons of tumor–normal pairs were carried out. To find out the high probability key players, we performed Genomic Identification of Significant Targets in Cancer analysis and found 144 genes to form the list of driver genes. Of these, 24 genes attained high GISTIC scores and suggest being significantly associated with CRC. Loss of heterozygosity and uniparental disomy were found to affect 9 genes and suggest different mechanisms associated with CRC in every patient. Here we present the details of the methods used in carrying out the above analyses. Also, we provide some additional data on biomarker analysis that would complement the findings.