GENETIC ALTERATIONS IN LOCALIZED PROSTATE -CANCER - IDENTIFICATION OFA COMMON REGION OF DELETION ON CHROMOSOME ARM 18Q

Prostate cancer is one of the most common malignancies in men. Few aut hors have attempted to identify consistent genetic alterations at the molecular level in adenocarcinoma of the prostate, but those most freq uently reported are loss of heterozygosity (LOH) involving chromosome arms 8p, 10g, 16q, and 18q and inactivation of the TP53 tumor suppress or gene. In order to determine if alterations frequently found in othe r adenocarcinomas (breast, ovarian, colorectal), including losses of g enetic material from chromosome arms 1p, 3p, 7q, 8p, 11p, 17p, I7q, an d 18q, are also involved in prostate cancer, we examined 20 localized early-stage prostate rumors. We detected no mutations of the TP53 gene . Allelic losses were found from 7q (33%), 8p (50%), 10q (20%), and 18 q (33%). Furthermore, as the first step toward isolating tumor suppres sor genes on 18q, we used six polymorphic markers and identified a sma ll common deleted region between the chromosome 18 centromere and the D18S19 locus.