Cancer of Unknown Primary Site (CUPS) may soon become a term of the past. With the availability of microarray technology, gene expression patterns of metastatic poorly differentiated and undifferentiated cancers can now be compared with gene expression patterns of known tissue types representing morphology of solid tumors. This in turn may help identify the site of origin of a particular tumor.
The “Tissue of Origin”is one such test cleared by the FDA to identify the origin of a challenging tumor. It is encouraging to note that these molecular methodologies are helping both diagnose and treat cancer patients.
