Investigation of the effects of nicotine and levamisole on SW620 colon adenocarcinoma cells using a customized r-routine for automated microarray analysis

Nicotine, the addictive component of tobacco, shows proliferative and antiapoptotic activity in cancer cells. Levamisole, an antihelmintic, on the other hand, has been tested as an additive chemotherapeutic agent and in treatment of nephrotic syndrome. Nicotine and levamisole are both agonists of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors; effects of these two agents have not been studied in colon cancer transcriptome. In this study, nicotine and levamisole exposed SW620 colon cancer cells, at a dose of 1 μM for 7 days, were studied with respect to changes in expression using microarrays. For data analysis, a custom R-routine which makes extensive use of open source R-BioConductor Project and associated packages has been written; and it is composed of three modules: QualCont module performs quality controls supported with several visual