Somatic genetic changes on chromosome 18 in breast carcinomas: is the DCC gene involved?

Recently, a gene has been isolated from the long arm of chromosome 18 which was shown to be frequently deleted in colorectal carcinomas and hence designated the DCC gene (Fearon et al., 1990). To explore the possible involvement of this gene in breast cancer, we have used 5 polymorphic DNA markers (one for 18p, and four for 18q) to examine the status of chromosome 18 in 49 primary breast carcinomas by comparing the genotypes of lymphocyte and tumour DNA samples. Imbalance of alleles, resulting in allelic loss of duplication, was observed in 17 cases (38% of informative cases). In 13 of these, this imbalance included the locus D18S8 located within the DCC gene region. In the remaining 4 cases this locus was not involved, with the affected chromosome region mapping proximally of D18S8 in 3 cases, and distally in 1 case. These results indicate that chromosome 18 is rearranged in breast cancer more frequently than is expected on the basis of cytogenetic data alone, and warrant a closer inspection of the DCC gene in this tumour.