Cytogenetic heterogeneity and progression of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

Abstract It is widely believed that most human tumors, including esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), arise through multistep genetic and cytogenetic alterations. The time sequence of these alterations, however, is still unknown. The present study was designed to differentiate common early changes from uncommon later ones with combined comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) and ploidy analyses in multiple or single samples of 12 ESCCs. We first demonstrated that the mean copy numbers of chromosomes 3 and 11, determined directly by fluorescence in situ hybridization, showed linear correlation with the mean copy numbers calculated from the G/R ratio of CGH and DNA ploidy ( R 2 =0.714, P