Frequent allelic losses at the short arm of chromosome 3p in invasive ductal carcinoma of breast in Egypt

Abstract EN

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers affecting women in western countries as well as in Egypt.

Deletion on the short arm of chromosome 3 (3p) has been detected in breast cancer using cytogenetic and loss of heterozygosity (LOH) studies which suggested the presence of tumor suppressor gene loci on that chromosomal arm.

In this report 45 cases of invasive ductal carcinoma of breast were studied for LOH using 10 highly polymorphic microsatellite markers distributed over the short arm of chromosome 3 (3p).

LOH was observed in 87 % of the cases examined.

In this study, three common regions on 3p chromosome showed LOH.

The highest LOH was detected at the 3p14-13 region which showed 42.75 % of allelic losses.

The second region was at 3p14.2-14.1 where 21 % of allelic losses were observed.

This region contains the recently identified Fragile Histidine Triad (FHIT) tumor suppressor gene.

The last region that showed LOH was at 3p21.1-14.3 region which exhibited 21 % losses.

No significant correlation was observed between LOH and different clinico-pathological parameters.

These results suggest that 3 or more tumor suppressor gene regions on the short arm of chromosome 3 including the FHIT gene may play an important role in breast cancer tumorigenesis.