Tsuneo Miya

Gingival squamous cell carcinoma in a patient with chronic graft-versus-host disease

This article describes a gingival squamous cell carcinoma that developed in a 21-year-old woman who received a bone marrow transplant at the age of 16 from her human leukocyte antigen-identical sister as treatment for severe aplastic anemia. Thirty days after transplantation, she presented with cutaneous erythema as a result of acute graft-versus-host disease, and this subsequently evolved into chronic graft-versus-host disease. A lichenoid white plaque of the gingiva developed shortly thereafter, and it began to increase in size rapidly 4 years posttransplantation. Biopsy indicated squamous cell carcinoma arising in this region, apparently associated with chronic graft-versus-host disease. Few reports have described a secondary solid malignancy involving the oral cavity of young adults after bone marrow transplantation.

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.