Can Enrichment Score from GSEA indicate the extent of a certain cell behavior?

Question

[rbaggioh]

Dear all:

I'm performing transcriptomic analysis of a certain epithelial cell, and I'd like to probe the EMT status of that cell. Can I perform GSEA by an EMT gene set, and using the enrichment score to indicate the EMT status ranging from E to M?

Thank you

[h.mon]

I think you can, but I would be suspicious about its predictive power unless you validate this method and benchmark it against the competing methods - for example, see here.