1998 Volume 6 Issue 2 Pages 85-88
To clarify the chromosome 14q32 abnormalities present in esophageal carcinoma and gastric carcinoma at the molecular level, we applied the fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) technique to metaphases of 16 esophageal carcinoma cell lines and used PCR-SSCP to analyze loss of heterozygosity (LOH) in 60 gastric carcinomas. Chromosome abnormalities associated with the 14q32 region occurred in 7 out of 16 esophageal cell lines. There were two different breakpoint cluster regions. One was found within or more telomeric to the variable region of the immunoglobulin heavy chain locus. Another breakpoint was located in the region between the tcl-1 locus and the D14S19 locus. PCR-SSCP showed that 51.7% of the 60 gastric carcinomas had LOH for at least one locus on chromosome 14 q 24-32, and this region overlapped with one of the breakpoint cluster regions found in the esophageal carcinoma cell lines. Frequent genetic abnormalities around this region have been found in colorectal carcinoma, neuroblastoma, bladder carcinoma, and ovarian carcinoma by RFLP analysis and cytogenetic studies. Taking those previous studies and our results together, it is hypothesized that the telomeric region of chromosome 14 may contain a tumor suppressor gene, inactivation of which might be caused by chromosomal translocation as well as allelic loss of this region.
