Exclusion of BBC1 and CMAR as candidate breast tumour-suppressor genes

Loss of heterozygosity (LOH) on chromosome arm 16q occurs in 48-65% of breast tumours. One small region of overlap is located at 16q24.3. Two genes located in this region, the cellular adhesion regulatory molecule (CMAR) and the breast basic conserved gene (BBC1), are plausible candidate tumour-suppressor genes. Mutational analysis of the retained copy of these genes has been performed by direct sequencing in a selected set of breast tumours that show LOH at 16q24.3 but not at other regions on chromosome arm 16q. In CMAR no other alterations than the previously described 4-bp insertion of CACA at nucleotide 241 could be detected, which was also present in constitutional DNA of the same patients. This polymorphism occurs homozygously in germline DNA of normal individuals and breast cancer patients. LOH analysis at this locus shows no preferential loss of a particular variant of the 241 polymorphism. In the BBC1 gene, three different alterations were found, but only one resulted in an amino acid substitution. This is a known polymorphism, however, also appearing in germline DNA. The absence of tumour-specific mutations in CMAR and BBC1 in this selected series of breast tumours implies that another gene at 16q24.3 must be the tumour-suppressor gene that is the target for LOH in breast cancer.