Proximal 3p deletion in renal cell carcinoma cells from a patient with von Hippel-Lindau disease.

A case of proximal 3p deletion is reported in tumor cells from a patient with renal cell carcinoma and von Hippel-Lindau disease. This is the first report of this deletion with renal cell carcinoma. With the previously detected translocations at the same breakpoint, this report confirms the 3p14 breakpoint as critical in this neoplasm. This strongly suggests that renal cell carcinoma results from a change in the genetic material in the proximal short arm of chromosome #3.