Novel PLA2G4C polymorphism as a molecular diagnostic assay for 19q loss in human gliomas

PLA2G4C, encoding cytosolic phospholipase A2-gamma (cPLA2-gamma), is a 17-exon gene located on chromosome 19q13.3 within the putative glioma tumor suppressor gene region. Given the clinical importance of assessing 1p and 19q loss in human gliomas, the development of convenient and practical assays for detecting allelic loss is of considerable priority in neuro-oncology. We report a minisatellite polymorphism in the untranslated region of exon 1, with allelic variants that have one, two or three 27-bp repeats. The polymorphism is informative in 55.7% of a reference population, and accurately detects allelic loss of 19q in human gliomas. This novel marker offers distinct advantages for assessing 19q status in malignant gliomas. The relatively large size of the repeats allows detection of allelic variants with standard ethidium bromide-stained agarose gels and the PLA2G4C marker is the closest polymorphism to the smallest common deletion area in the putative glioma tumor suppressor gene region. These characteristics suggest that the PLA2G4C polymorphism will be a convenient and practical assay for clinical and research evaluation of 19q status in human gliomas.