Genetic alterations in Scandinavian neuroblastoma tumors

Abstract

The results presented here derive from our efforts to find genes and chromosomal regions of interest in the formation and progression of the childhood tumor neuroblastoma.Neuroblastoma is the most common extracranial solid tumor of childhood. It is a tumor of the postganglionic sympathetic nervous system, and clinically, the hallmark of neuroblastoma is its heterogeneity.In order to characterize chromosomal regions of interest the methods loss of heterozygozity (LOH) studies using PCR-based polymorphic markers, representational difference analysis (RDA), somatic cell hybrid mapping, fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH), radiation hybrid mapping and physical mapping by construction of a BAC-contig have been used. For mutation analysis of genes the methods single strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP), heteroduplex (HD) and DNA-sequencing have been used, and the expression studies of candidate genes have been performed using RT-PCR.In the Scandinavian neuroblastoma tumor material we have been able to show that deletions of chromosome arm 3p is the second most common deleted chromosomal region (16%) next to 1p (22%). We could also see a difference in clinical outcome between patients with tumors displaying deletion of the entire chromosome 3 versus the ones with tumors displaying deletions of region 3p only. The ones with 3p-deletion have all died of disease whereas the ones with entire chromosome 3 loss are alive and well. We have also characterized a region on chromosome 1, 1p36, shown, by others and us, to be commonly deleted in neuroblastoma tumors. A critical region of app. 25 cM between genetic markers D1S80 and D1S244 could be defined. We have also by using combined LOH-data from both neuroblastoma and germ cell tumors defined a region of common deletion for both tumor types, this region could be defined by markers D1S508 and D1S244 and is app. 5 cM.Also some 1p36 putative tumor suppressor genes, i.e. CDC2L1, TP73 and CORT, have been fine mapped and tested for expression and mutations in neuroblastomas. No evidence for any of them to be the 1p36 neuroblastoma tumor suppressor gene has however been discovered.