Trisomy 7 in short-term cultures of colorectal adenocarcinomas

Cytogenetic analysis of short-term cultures from six adenocarcinomas of the colon revealed trisomy 7 as a recurrent clonal chromosomal abnormality. In three tumors, +7 was the sole change. In the fourth carcinoma, two aberrant clones with simple numerical aberrations were detected; one with +7 and one with +3. Tumors 5 and 6 both displayed two completely different abnormal clones; one had numerous numerical and structural abnormalities and thus was undoubtedly representative of the cancer parenchyma, and the other had only +7. The karyotypic differences between the coexisting clones in the latter two cases seem to argue against an evolutionary scenario in which the karyotypically more complex clones have evolved from the clones carrying trisomy 7 only. Furthermore, in tumor 6 the metaphases with trisomy 7 were found in colonies of fibroblast-like cells whereas those with a large number of abnormalities grew in colonies of epithelial-like cells. The combined results indicate that mitoses with trisomy 7 as the sole chromosomal change do not represent the neoplastic parenchyma of colorectal adenocarcinomas.