Characterisation of apoptosis inductor and suppressor genes in thermochemotherapy treated Ewing tumor cells

Hyperthermia enhances cytotoxic effects of Melphalan in Ewing tumor cells. In these cells cytotoxicity is mainly mediated by caspase-dependent pathways. Therefore, cDNA expression arrays were performed separately assessing hyperthermia- and Melphalan- induced, as well as the combined stimulation-induced effects. Roughly 200 apoptosis-related genes were analyzed 6hrs after stimulation by each of the 3 above described stimuli and after 6hrs culture in medium only. However, clusters of interest were only those genes, which were significantly up- or down-regulated by each of the 3 conditions compared to the medium c…