Analysis of somatic changes in human tumor DNA using synthetic oligonucleotide probes

Like most hematologic malignancies, solid cancers may be associated with non-random chromosomal abnormalities. Heterogeneity in the cell population in solid cancers and the chromosomal variations occurring among primary, explant, and passaged cells of a given tumor, however, present a major difficulty in assessment of their cytogenetic changes. Alternative approaches to identifying specific somatic changes in subtypes of solid cancers, without cell culture manipulations, must be developed. This report describes preliminary evidence indicating that oligonucleotide probes, homologous to short tandem repeats, that can determine individual identity, may also be useful tools with which to examine somatic changes in DNA which has been isolated directly from a tumor mass. Two, of the four, bladder tumors (transitional cell carcinomas) analyzed, exhibited oligonucleotide-based DNA fingerprint patterns that differed from those of corresponding constitutive or uninvolved tissue DNA. The changes that were observed included gain or loss of hypervariable DNA fragments or shifts in band intensities.