Abstract
To determine whether alterations in oncogenes are associated with tumour progression and metastasis, DNAs from 32 metastatic tumour samples of different sites in 12 autopsy cases of gastric carcinomas were analysed for alterations of ERBB, ERBB2, HST1, INT2 and LMYC genes by Southern blot hybridisation. DNAs from 89 primary gastric carcinomas including 69 advanced carcinomas and 20 early carcinomas were also examined. In primary tumours, no amplification was detected in early carcinomas, while amplification of ERBB and ERBB2 genes was detected in one (1.4%) and four (5.8%) out of 69 advanced carcinomas, respectively. In metastatic tumours, amplification of ERBB gene was detected in three metastatic tumours (9.4%), and all of them had allelic deletion of the LMYC gene. Regardless of histological type, amplification of ERBB2 gene was detected in 8 metastatic tumours (25.0%), out of which three tumours had coamplification of HST1 and INT2 genes. The incidence of ERBB2 amplification in metastatic tumours was significantly higher than that in primary tumours. These results indicate that multi-alterations in oncogenes might occur during tumour progression and metastasis of human gastric carcinomas.
Highlights
Carcinomas and 64 cases of advanced primary tumours were resected at surgery and 5 primary and 32 metastatic tumours were obtained at autopsy
We summarised the incidence of oncogene amplification in early, advanced and metastatic tumour of gastric carcinomas (Table II)
One is ERBB which is similar to the gene for the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and the other is ERBB2 which encodes a receptor like protein (Yamamoto et al, 1986)
Summary
A total of 121 gastric carcinomas including 20 early tumours, 69 advanced tumours, and 32 metastatic tumours were analysed. Carcinomas and 64 cases of advanced primary tumours were resected at surgery and 5 primary and 32 metastatic tumours were obtained at autopsy. The samples of early carcinomas were formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded. In advanced and metastatic tumours, a small piece of each tissue was immediately frozen in liquid nitrogen as soon as the tumour tissues were removed; the diagnosis was confirmed microscopically on cryostat sections. Received 16 October 1989; and in revised form 22 January 1990
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