Method for quantitative measurement of gene expression for identifying individuals at risk for bronchogenic carcinoma

1. A method to measure expression of multiple target genes in a progenitor cell for bronchogenic, carcinoma comprising:

using reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) to allow simultaneous expression measurement of the multiple target genes,

wherein said RT-PCR is quantitative competitive PCR and

wherein the quantitative competitive RT-PCR is used to measure mRNA levels of GSTPI, GSTM3 and a glutathione peroxidase (GSHPx) in the progenitor cell,

wherein the levels of the GSTPI, GSTM3 and GSHPx are significantly lower in bronchogenic carcinoma cells than in normal bronchial epithelial cells.

2. The method of claim 1 , in which the progenitor cell comprises a bronchial epithelial cell.

3. The method of claim 1 , in which sensitivity for detecting normal bronchial epithelial cells as compared to bronchogenic carcinoma cells is about 90%.

4. The method of claim 1 , in which specificity for detecting normal bronchial epithelial cells as compared to bronchogenic carcinoma cells is about 76%.

5. The method of claim 1 , comprising

a) coamplifying a housekeeping gene along with the target genes (to control for the amount of cDNA included in the reaction);

b) including known amounts of cDNA competitive templates (CTs) for both the target genes and the housekeeping gene;

c) identifying, choosing primers for synthesizing the competitive templates (CTs) and for amplification of native template (NT) and CT sequences;

d) comparing the levels of the housekeeping gene CTs to the target gene CTs where the ratio of housekeeping gene CT to each of the target gene CTs is the same;

e) preparing a master mix that contains the components: dNTPs, buffer, water, Taq polymerise, cDNA and aliquot of CT solution containing known concentrations of CTs for the housekeeping gene and the target genes;

f) specifying each gene to be amplified in each reaction by the primers included in each reaction by aliquoting separately from the master mix;

g) determining the amount of cDNA loaded for each sample by comparing the density of PCR product band for housekeeping gene NTcDNA to PCR product band for housekeeping gene CTcDNA; and

h) determining quantitative expression of the target genes.

6. The method of claim 5 , in which the quantitative expression of the target genes is determined by: a) calculating a ratio of target gene NT to CT product; and b) dividing the calculated number of target gene NT molecules by the calculated number of housekeeping gene NT molecules to correct for loading differences.

7. The method of claim 5 , in which the housekeeping gene comprises β-actin.

8. The method of claim 7 , in which the concentration of the competitive templates (CTs) in each PCR reaction is 10 −14 M for β-actin and varied for each of the other genes.