Trisomy 8 in cervical cancer

Abstract

Cervical cancer is a malignancy which typically occurs at the transformation zone between squamous and glandular epithelium. The vast majority fall into two histologic types: squamous cell and adenocarcinoma. We have previously reported extensively on abnormal chromosome 8 copy number in various cancers, which appears to be an ubiquitous phenomenon. In the present pilot project, we studied chromosome 8 copy number together with a chromosome 17 control using formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded archival cervical cancer tissues. HER-2/neu oncogene amplification was also studied in this sample, as reported in a previous abstract presented at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics. From a total of 23 cases successfully analyzed, 12 (52%) were found to be trisomic for chromosome 8, and 3 (13%) were found to be trisomic for chromosome 17. Of the trisomic 8 cases, 2 were also trisomic for chromosome 17, which implies that the tumors are either triploid or doubly trisomic. However 10 rumors were trisomic for chromosome 8, but were disomic for chromosome 17. Among the 12 trisomic 8 cases, 1 was also amplified for HER-2/neu whereas 11 were nonamplified. Clinicopathologic parameters of the trisomic and amplified cases will be compared to those of the disomic nonamplified cases. In view of the present results, further exploration using a larger study sample size may be warranted. (This study was partially funded by Vysis, Inc., Downers Grove, IL).