Abstract: The invention relates to the prognosis of colorectal cancer, especially left-sided (distal) colorectal cancer. The invention provides an assay method for selecting patients suffering from colorectal cancer for different prognostic groups, the method comprising the steps of detecting mutations in expressed KRAS mRNA and selecting the prognostic group of said patient, wherein the presence or increased level of a mutation in expressed KRAS mRNA indicates that the patient having a left-sided colorectal cancer has a worse prognosis than in the absence of a mutation in expressed KRAS mRNA.

Abstract: This document relates to melting curve analysis of nucleic acids. The method according to first aspect of the invention comprises analyzing a nucleic acid melting curve measured from a sample, the melting curve comprising a sum signal of at least two nucleic acid melt signals and a background signal as a function of temperature. The method further comprises optimizing at least one constant in a temperature-dependent exponential correction function so as to minimize the variation of the nucleic acid melting curve at a temperature region where the target nucleic acids in the sample remain essentially double stranded, and generating a corrected nucleic acid melting curve representative of the nucleic acid melt signal by applying said exponential correction function over the region of the measured melting curve where the strands of the nucleic acids dissociate.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method for quantitative and/or comparative assessment of the relative amounts of mRNA transcripts present in a cell or tissue sample. In the method reverse transcription of the mRNA contained in the sample is first carried out using sequence-modifying primers for one or several genes in the same reaction to obtain a pool of sequence-modified cDNA molecules. After completion of the reverse transcription redundant sequence-modifying primers are removed or inactivated. This step is followed by a step of co-amplifying the sequence-modified cDNA templates with a reference DNA template in individual gene-specific amplification reactions. By quantitatively measuring the amounts and determining the relative levels of the amplification products derived from sequence-modified cDNA and reference DNA templates, a gene-specific cDNA over DNA ratio is obtained in each of the individual amplification reactions.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method for quantitative and/or comparative assessment of the relative amounts of mRNA transcripts present in a cell or tissue sample. In the method reverse transcription of the mRNA contained in the sample is first carried out using sequence-modifying primers for one or several genes in the same reaction to obtain a pool of sequence-modified cDNA molecules. After completion of the reverse transcription redundant sequence-modifying primers are removed or inactivated. This step is followed by a step of co-amplifying the sequence-modified cDNA templates with a reference DNA template in individual gene-specific amplification reactions. By quantitatively measuring the amounts and determining the relative levels of the amplification products derived from sequence-modified cDNA and reference DNA templates, a gene-specific cDNA over DNA ratio is obtained in each of the individual amplification reactions.