ANALYSES OF NUMERICAL ABERRATIONS OF CHROMOSOME 17 AND TP53 GENE DELETION/AMPLIFICATION IN HUMAN ORAL SQUAMOUS CELL CARCINOMA

Abstract: In Romania, oral and facial cancers represent approximately 5 % of all cancers. Deactivation and unregulated expression of oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes may be involved in the pathogenesis of oral squamous cell carcinoma. The genomic change results in numerical and structural chromosomal alterations, particularly in chromosomes 3, 9, 11 and 17. The aim of our study was to identify numerical aberrations of chromosome 17, deletion or amplification of p53 gene and to reveal correlations between abnormalities of chromosome 17and of p53 gene with TNM status and grading in 15 subjects with oral squamous cell carcinoma. 80 % of cases presented chromosome 17 polysomy and only 20 % of cases had chromosome 17 monosomy. 46.6 % of samples revealed p53 gene amplification and 33.3 % of them p53 deletion. Polysomy of chromosome 17 was also detected in tumor-adjacent epithelia. The degree of the cytogenetic abnormality did not correlate with the stage of the disease, the histological differentiation of oral squamous cell carcinoma and lymph node metastasis. Molecular cytogenetic techniques, using fluorescence in situ hybridization with chromosome-specific DNA probes, facilitate the confirmation of presumed chromosomal aberrations with high sensitivity and specificity