Microarray experiments have a large variety of applications and several important achievements have been obtained by means of this technology, especially within the field of whole genome expression profiling, which undoubtedly is the most diffused world-wide. Nevertheless, care must be taken in unconditionally applying such high-throughput techniques and in extracting/interpreting their results. Both the validity and the reproducibility of microarray-based clinical research have recently been challenged. Pitfalls and potentials of the microarray technology for gene expression profiling are critically reviewed in this paper.