Allelic imbalance mapping of chromosome 16 shows two regions of common deletion in prostate adenocarcinoma

Allelic imbalance (AI) has now been reported on the long arm of chromosome 16 in several cancers including breast, prostate, hepatocellular carcinoma, and Wilms tumor. Such nonrandom AI is commonly associated with the presence of a tumor suppressor gene (TSG) at or near the tested locus. Previous studies in our laboratory indicated that prostate cancer genomes frequently exhibit a region of allelic loss near the q terminus of chromosome 16. Here we report a detailed, PCR based, allelic imbalance study at ten polymorphic loci on 16q. The data indicate that there are two common regions of 16q AI in prostate cancer, one at 16q21–22 (50% of informative cases) and another at 16q24.2-qter (56% of informative cases). These are similar to regions of 16q previously shown to exhibit AI in breast cancer. Neither of these regions shows correlation of AI with the clinical parameters; Gleason grade, tumor stage, or metastases.