Absence of PPP2R1B gene alterations in primary ovarian cancers

The PPP2R1B gene has recently been implicated as a tumor suppressor based on the finding of somatic alterations in lung and colon cancers. PPP2R1B is located on chromosome 11q22-24 which coincides with the site of frequent loss of heterozygosity (LOH) in ovarian cancer. We investigated if the PPP2R1B gene was inactivated in ovarian cancer by single strand conformational polymorphism (SSCP) and heteroduplex (HD) analysis of 99% of the coding region. LOH at the PPP2R1B locus was detected in 32% of the malignant tumors but no somatic alterations were detected in any of 65 malignant, five borderline or six benign tumors. A germline G > A transition (GGC > GAC) in codon 90 was detected in 4/76 tumors. This alteration has previously been described as a mutation but on further investigation we found that the frequency of this variant among 167 ovarian cancers (4.2%) was not statistically significantly different from that observed in 247 non-cancer random controls (2.4%). We conclude that the PPP2R1B gene is not involved in the pathogenesis of ovarian cancer. The codon 90 Gly > Asp alteration may represent a non-pathological polymorphism and consequently the mutation frequency reported in lung cancers may have been overstated and the designation of PPP2R1B as a tumor suppressor gene should be regarded with caution.