[Flow cytometric analysis of oncogene products]

Flow cytometry (FCM) of oncogene products which opens new avenues of cell biological investigation of human neoplasia is being reviewed. Using H-ras p21/DNA dual FCM, patients with DNA-aneuploid multiple myeloma (MM) were examined. The patients whose MM cells expressed high level of H-ras p21 had poor prognosis. Specificity of this assay was appraised extensively. It is not likely that H-ras p21 expressed in MM is of oncogenic form since point mutation of H-ras gene was not reported in B cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia which is closely located to MM in B lymphocyte differentiation lineage. High expression of H-ras p21 in MM seems to be related to cell proliferation and/or differentiation. H-ras p21/DNA dual FCM is applicable to analyse the pathophysiology of tumor cells. FCM analyses of other oncogene products and proteins related to cell proliferation, c-myc, p53 and Ki-67, were also described. Multiparameter FCM analysis is quite suited to examine expression of these proteins in situ.