MYCN IS THE ONLY HIGHLY EXPRESSED GENE FROM THE CORE AMPLIFIED DOMAININ HUMAN NEUROBLASTOMAS

MYCN amplification in neuroblastomas is strongly associated with advan ced stages of disease and a poor prognosis. We have recently defined a 130 kb core region of the MYCN amplicon that is consistently amplifie d in neuroblastomas. However, it has been argued that other expressed sequences were coamplified with MYCN and, as a result, might contribut e to the aggressive phenotype of MYCN-amplified neuroblastomas. Theref ore, we have screened cosmids representing the core MYCN-amplified dom ain and surrounding DNA by using a differential hybridization approach to detect other amplified, highly expressed genes from this region. O ur results suggest that MYCN is the only highly expressed gene consist ently amplified in human neuroblastomas, and that the MYCN gene is lik ely to be the only selective marker for genomic amplification in these tumors. (C) 1998 Wiley-Liss. Inc.