Frequent allelic loss on chromosomes 4q and 16q associated with human hepatocellular carcinoma in Taiwan.

To define the critical region of liver-specific tumor suppressor genes in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), we analyzed 30 cases of hepatocellular carcinoma using nine 4q and six 16q microsatellite polymorphic DNA markers. We observed one major common deleted region which was flanked by D4S175-D4S1625 and there may be two tumor suppressor genes on chromosome 16q associated with HCC. An extensive study of allelotyping of human HCC was therefore carried out in the candidate region on arms of chromosome 4q with additional tumor tissues and more informative microsatellite DNA markers. These data imply that at least one putative tumor suppressor gene is located in the human chromosome 4q26-q27 region and provides very useful information for further construction of a long-range physical restriction map and thereafter cloning of the putative tumor suppressor gene.