Allelic imbalances in human bladder cancer: Genome-wide detection with high-density single-nucleotide polymorphism arrays

Abstract

Background: Bladder cancer is characterized by genomic instability. In this study, we investigated whether genome-wide screening using single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) arrays could detect allelic imbalance (loss or gain of at least one allele) in bladder cancers. Methods: For microarray analysis, DNA was isolated from microdissected bladder tumors and leukocytes from 11 patients. The stage T1 tumor (connective tissue invasive) and the subsequent stage T2-4 tumor (muscle invasive) were available from eight of these patients, and only the first muscle-invasive stage T2-4 tumor was available from three of the 11 patients. The microarray contained 1494 biallelic polymorphic sequences. For micro-satellite analyses, DNA was isolated from tumors and leukocytes of nine patients with primary T2-4 tumors and 13 patients with Ta (noninvasive) tumors. All statistical tests were two-sided. Results: We assigned a genotype to 1204 loci, 343 of which were heterozygous. Allelic imbalance was detected in known areas of imbalance on chromosomes 6, 8, 9, 11, and 17, and a new area of imbalance was detected on the p arm of chromosome 6. Microsatellite analysis of nine other T2-4 tumors and 13 Ta tumors showed that allelic imbalance was more frequent in T2-4 tumors than in Ta tumors (P