Specific genetic change in tumors associated with von Hippel-Lindau disease

Previous reports showed that the loss of DNA sequences on the short arm of chromosome 3 (3p) is consistently found in sporadic renal cell carcino-mas. To evaluate the significance of this genetic change, we looked for the loss of 3p alleles in hereditary renal cell carcinomas and other tumors from pa-tients with von Hippel-Lindau disease. Specific loss of alleles from chromo-some 3p was detected with polymor-phic DNA markers in 11 renal cell carcinomas, one pheochromocytoma, two spinal hemangioblastomas and one cerebellar hemangioblastoma from vo