Allelic imbalances on chromosome 20 in human transitional cell carcinoma

One determinant of the survival time of cancer-bearing patients may be gene tic factors. In chemically induced bladder cancers of mice, differences in survival time have been observed among several inbred strains. Genetic anal yses of such differences in crosses between C57BL/6 and NON mice revealed t hat the survival period is determined by two quantitative trait loci on mou se chromosomes 6 and 2, respectively. We explored the possibility that gene tic alterations may be observed in the syntenic conserved chromosomal regio ns of human transitional cell carcinoma corresponding to mouse chromosomes 6 and 2, Human chromosome 7, containing a region syntenic to mouse chromoso me 6, is reported to harbor frequent genetic alterations in bladder cancers . In this study, we investigated 70 human urothelial cancers for possible g enetic alterations on human chromosome 20p and 209 containing regions synte nic to mouse chromosome 2. Allelic imbalances were observed in 22 cases (31 .4%) on 20p and 18 cases (25.7%) on 209, Those allelic imbalances, however, did not show a direct correlation with the prognosis of the patients. High er grade tumors tended to show more frequent imbalances on chromosome 20; h owever, this tendency was not significant,