Meta-analysis of microarrays: interstudy validation of gene expression profiles reveals pathway dysregulation in prostate cancer.

The increasing availability and maturity of DNA microarray technology has led to an explosion of cancer profiling studies. To extract maximum value from the accumulating mass of publicly available cancer gene expression data, methods are needed to evaluate, integrate, and intervalidate multiple datasets. Here we demonstrate a statistical model for performing meta-analysis of independent microarray datasets. Implementation of this model revealed that four prostate cancer gene expression datasets shared significantly similar results, independent of the method and technology used (i.e., spotted cDNA versus oligonucleotide). This interstudy cross-validation approach generated a cohort of genes that were…