LOSS OF HETEROZYGOSITY INVOLVING THE APC TUMOR SUPPRESSOR GENE IN HUMAN COLORECTAL CARCINOMA

To investigate whether aberration of the APC gene play any role in the development of Chinese sporadic cohwectal carcinomas, we used a polymorphic silt, located in exon 11 which created a new restriction site for Rsal to analyze LOH for the APC gene . We found that 20/29 (68.9%) patients with colorectal cancer were informative for the APC exon 11 site and loss of one allele was detected in 40% of 20 informative cases. These data suggested that loss of heterozygosity of APC gene (APC-LOH) play a role in the pathogenesis of Chinese culorectal cancer. APC-LOH is a earlier event of colorectal tumorigenesis and may be of diagnostic value in patient suffering coh, rectal cancer.