Interstitial deletion of short arm of chromosome 11 limited to Wilms' tumor cells in a patient without aniridia.

An interstitial deletion of the short arm of a chromosome 11 was found in Wilms' tumor cells of a patient without aniridia. The chromosomes in her peripheral blood lymphocytes were normal. The karyotype of the tumor cells is similar to that reported for the somatic cells of patients with aniridia-Wilms' tumor association. We showed that the same cytogenetic change as that seen in patients with this condition, namely, an interstitial deletion of 11p13, can occur in patients without aniridia as a mutation that is confined to tumor cells.