MOLECULAR-GENETICS AND HUMAN PROSTATIC-CARCINOMA

Advances in molecular genetic techniques have reached the point where clinical material can be reasonably well-characterized in detail. One area that is receiving increasing attention is the genetic abnormalities of tumors. Using the technique of restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis, it is possible today to build up a picture of the genome and to identify which regions are deleted or are rearranged in the tumor cells of an individual patient. Twenty years ago, experimental and theoretical findings suggested that loss of gene function could be an essential component in oncogenesis. Such genes have been named tumor suppressor genes. The significance of the consistent loss of specific regions of genetic information from the genomes of tumor cells of a particular histological type is now appreciated, as such areas may contain as yet unrecognized tumor suppressor genes. The characterization of regions consistently lost thus forms the first step in localizing such genes. We have applied this technology to the study of prostate cancer and our preliminary findings show consistent losses of genetic information from chromosomes 8, 10, and 16.