Abstract
Fluorescence in situ hybridization was applied on a collection of 609 squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck (HNSCCs),including 511 primary carcinomas of different clinical stage and anatomical localization and 98 recurrent carcinomas, second primary carcinomas, and regional metastases on a tissue microarray. The overall prevalence of amplifications of five oncogenes analyzed was 34.5% for CCND1, 12.7% for EGFR, 8.8% for MYC, 6.2% for ZNF217, and 3.6% for ERBB2. CCND1 amplifications were associated with the pharyngeal site in primary carcinomas (P < 0.001), whereas amplifications of ZNF217 were less frequent in pharyngeal carcinomas as compared with primary oral and laryngeal carcinomas (P = 0.02). The amplification pattern of these oncogenes suggests that different molecular pathways are involved in HNSCCs of different localizations.
Footnotes
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The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked advertisement in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
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↵1 Supported by the Deutsche Krebshilfe (No. 10-1745-Ho), by the Medizinische Fakultät der Universität Heidelberg (No. 325/2000), and by the National Genome Research Network, Germany (No. KB-P2T02)
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↵2 To whom requests for reprints should be addressed, at Klinik für Mund-, Kiefer- und Gesichtschirurgie der Universität Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 400, D-69210 Heidelberg, Germany. Phone: 49-6221-56-7327; Fax: 49-6221-56-33532; E-mail: Christof_Hofele{at}med.uni-heidelberg.de
- Received September 27, 2002.
- Accepted January 27, 2003.
- ©2003 American Association for Cancer Research.
Volume 63, Issue 6
