RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access Chromosomal instability a

ie nt can x [1,2]. It has long been postulated that chromosomal im-balance plays a role in tumourigenesis, since aneuploid genes whose expression was consistently correlated with total functional aneuploidy across multiple cancer types, How et al. BMC Cancer (2015) 15:361 DOI 10.1186/s12885-015-1372-0University Health Network, Toronto, ON, Canada Full list of author information is available at the end of the articlekaryotypes were first observed in cancer cells over a cen-tury ago [3]. Since then, evidence has shown that CIN promotes tumour initiation and growth [4-7]. In patient tumours, it has been demonstrated that CIN increases with increasing tumour grade as well as invasiveness Carter et al. developed a gene expression signature of CIN, the CIN70, which could predict patient survival and prognosis [14]. Over-expression of this CIN70 sig-nature was predictive of poor clinical outcome in 12 datasets representing six types of tumour: lymphoma, lung adenocarcinoma, glioma, medulloblastoma, meso-thelioma, and breast cancer [15-26]. In this study, we sought to examine CIN in cervical cancer and determin