Quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was used to determine the relative expression of FABP3 and FABP4 mRNA in NSCLC cancerous (n=30) and matched adjacent non-cancerous tissues (n=30) by normalizing to the housekeeping gene GAPDH. The gene discussed is FABP3; the disease is non-small cell lung carcinoma.