DEFINITION OF A COMMONLY DELETED REGION IN OVARIAN CANCERS TO A 300-KB SEGMENT OF CHROMOSOME 6Q27

Allelic deletions of chromosome 6q that occur frequently in ovarian ca ncers imply the presence of a putative tumor suppressor gene in this c hromosomal vicinity, We analyzed DNA from 32 patients with ovarian car cinomas for loss of heterozygosity at loci on the distal portion of ch romosome 6q and constructed a detailed deletion map. The map indicated a commonly deleted region between loci D6S149 (defined by C16-24) and A2, which are estimated to be 300 kb apart on the basis of our cosmid contig map. By means of exon trapping, we found that the human AF-6 g ene, which is disrupted in acute myeloid leukemia cells that carry a ( 6;11)(927;923) translocation, is located within. the commonly deleted region, Subsequent screening of the AF-6 gene in ovarian carcinomas re vealed no mutations, However, our mapping results, which narrowed the region containing the putative tumor suppressor gene to a 300-kb segme nt of 6q27, will facilitate further efforts to identify a gene associa ted with ovarian cancer.