[New strategies in the clinical evaluation of patients with colon cancer based on molecular studies]

During the last five years molecular studies allowed important advances in the knowledge of cancer colon with important clinical implications. The main finding was the identification and sequence analysis of the APC gen. Structural alterations of this gene have been detected in patients with Familial Adenomatous Polyposis and Gardner syndrome, which suggest a common disease. Furthermore, alterations of the APC gen appears to be also altered in cases of cancer of colon sporadic. Indicating that structural alteration of the APC gen can be inherited and/or acquired. Restriction fragment-length polymorphisms in the chromosome 5q21-22 can now be used clinically for premorbid diagnosis and counseling in familial adenomatous polyposis. The molecular studies allow the clinician to have a new approach in the management and screening of families with familial adenomatous polyposis. The sequence analysis and specific identification of the structural alteration of the APC gene is a more expensive and sophisticated study, although represent a more direct approach. In the Department of Gastroenterology of the INNSZ we are performing such molecular studies. The main purpose of our group is to proportionate integral clinical-molecular studies for families with hereditary colon cancer, create a national register of these diseases and investigate the molecular bases in order to generate new molecular diagnosis tools.