Akihisa Miyakawa

Allelic loss of chromosome 13q14.3 in human oral cancer: Correlation with lymph node metastasis

To evaluate the role of chromosome 13 deletions in oral squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) progression and to define the precise localization of putative tumor suppressor genes, we studied tumors from 34 unrelated patients with oral SCC by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR)‐loss of heterozygosity (LOH) assay, using 18 different polymorphic loci. Chromosome 13q allelic losses (LOH) were observed in 67.6% at 1 or more loci. These results enabled the identification of a putative minimal region of deletion mapped at 13q14.3. The commonly deleted region is located close, but telomeric to the RB1 locus. We also examined the same samples for inactivation of the RB1 gene by immunohistochemical analysis of paraffin‐embedded samples, but no significant variation in RB protein expression was detected. In addition, we also performed PCR‐single‐strand conformational polymorphism (SSCP) analysis to detect any mutation of the RB1 gene using 52 primer pairs, which covers all exons of this gene. We found no mutations of the RB1 gene in our samples. Interestingly, we found significant correlation between LOH of 13q14.3 and lymph node metastasis. Our results indicate that LOH of 13q is a common event in oncogenesis and/or progression of oral SCC, and also suggest the existence of a new suppressor gene near D13S273‐D13S176 loci which may play a role in these events. Int. J. Cancer (Pred. Oncol.) 79:312–317, 1998.

Localization of a tumour-suppressor gene associated with human oral cancer on 7q31.1.

To search for the existence of a tumour‐suppressor gene (TSG) associated with oral squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), PCR analysis of microsatellite polymorphisms corresponding to 14 loci which map to chromosome 7q21.3‐qter was performed to screen 35 patients with oral SCC for loss of heterozygosity (LOH). LOH was observed in at least one of the loci in 19 of 34 (55.9%) informative cases. Among the loci tested, frequent LOH was restricted at D7S522 on chromosome 7q31.1, which was measured within 1 cM. Furthermore, we detected microsatellite instability (MI) in 11 of 35 (31.4%) cases tested. Our observations indicate that alterations of chromosome 7q are associated with oral SCC tumorigenesis and that 7q31.1 might harbour at least one putative TSG. Int. J. Cancer 75:671–674, 1998.© 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.