Transcriptional adaptation of neuroblastoma cells to hypoxia.

Low oxygen pressure (hypoxia) is a physiological condition that has been linked to tumor progression and increased malignancy in several cancer forms. Cells of the childhood neoplasm neuroblastoma respond to hypoxia by attaining a lower grade of differentiation, which clinically is associated with poor prognosis. Furthermore, expression of the hypoxia inducible factor-2alpha correlates to poor outcome in neuroblastoma patients. In this report we have by microarray analysis studied transcriptional changes in seven neuroblastoma cell lines subjected to long term hypoxia. We find the gene regulatory response to be highly dependent on cell line background, however, a set of genes was coherently regulated by hypoxia and these genes are correlated to known hypoxia-induced transcriptional profiles.