Quick quantitative analysis of gene dosages associated with prognosis in neuroblastoma

The amplification of the N-myc gene and a gain of the chromosome 17q arm correlate with an unfavorable outcome in patients with neuroblastoma. In this study, we determined the gene dosage of the N-myc gene (located at 2p24) and Survivin gene (located at 17q25) using the p53 gene (located at 17p13) as the internal control gene by the TaqMan polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based gene dosage analysis in 25 neuroblastoma samples. Based on the assumption that the gene dosages of each gene of a normal individual lymphocytes are 1.0, 11 of the 25 cases with a corrected gene dosage of N-myc (N-myc/p53) of more than 2.0 had a more unfavorable prognosis than the 14 cases with a N-myc gene dosage of less than 2.0 (5-year survival rate: 18 vs. 71%, P < 0.01). Ten of 25 cases with a corrected Survivin gene dosage (Survivin/p53) of more than 2.0 had a more unfavorable prognosis than the 15 cases with a Survivin gene dosage of less than 2.0 (5-year survival rate: 10 vs. 67%, P < 0.01). This quantitative PCR system is considered to be useful for quickly and accurately evaluating the degree of malignancy of neuroblastoma in order to select the optimal treatment. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inland Ltd. All rights reserved.