Unequivocal Delineation of Clinicogenetic Subgroups and Development of a New Model for Improved Outcome Prediction in Neuroblastoma

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Abstract
Purpose Neuroblastoma is a genetically heterogeneous pediatric tumor with a remarkably variable clinical behavior ranging from widely disseminated disease to spontaneous regression. In this study, we aimed for comprehensive genetic subgroup discovery and assessment of independent prognostic markers based on genome-wide aberrations detected by comparative genomic hybridization (CGH). Materials and Methods Published CGH data from 231 primary untreated neuroblastomas were converted to a digitized format suitable for global data mining, subgroup discovery, and multivariate survival analyses. Results In contrast to previous reports, which included only a few genetic parameters, we present here for the first time a strategy that allows unbiased evaluation of all genetic imbalances detected by CGH. The presented approach firmly established the existence of three different clinicogenetic subgroups and indicated that chromosome 17 status and tumor stage were the only independent significant predictors for patient ...