Use of horizontal ultrathin gel electrophoresis to analyze allelic deletions in chromosome band 11p15.5 in gliomas

The prognosis for most patients with astrocytic glioma is poor, and postope rative life expectancy has not significantly improved in the last decade de spite advances in diagnosis, surgery, and adjuvant therapy, Progress has be en made, however, in cataloging the genetic alterations that occur in these tumors, Studying the allelic changes using loss of heterozygosity analysis has proven to be a reliable and rapid way of identifying genetic alteratio ns fundamental to the pathology of this disease. In this study, we used a s eries of fluorescent-labeled markers and a new horizontal ultrathin gel ele ctrophoresis technology (HUGE; GeneSys Technologies, Inc.) to analyze loss of heterozygosity on 11p15 in a series of 24 matched normal/tumor glioma pa irs that included both anaplastic astrocytomas and glioblastomas. These stu dies significantly narrowed the region harboring a putative 11p15.5 glioma- associated gene and further suggest that a second gene involved in the path ogenesis of brain tumors may exist, centromeric, in bands 11p15.5-p15.4.