Analysis of Chromosomal Aberrations in Thyroid Papillary Carcinomas Using Comparative Genomic Hybridization (CGH)

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Cancer of the thyroid is the sixth common cancer in Korea, and fourth common among the Korean women, in particular. Aming the prevalent carcinomas of thyroid, the papillary thyroid carcinoma is the most frequent type. Genomic instability is the characteristic of nearly all tumors as well as thyroid cancers. However, despite the high frequency of papillary thyroid carcinomas, their chromosomal alterations are poorly characterized in Korea. Comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) is a new fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) technique to identify genomic imbalances in cancers. In this study, CGH was carried out with the aim of analyzing non-random chromosomal aberrations involved in papillary thyroid carcinomas. MATERIALS AND METHOD: CGH was carried out. Biotin-labeled tumor DNA and digoxigenin-labeled normal DNA were co-hybridized to normal metaphase cells. Then, the ratio of fluorescence was analyzed by an image analyzer. In array-CGH, Cy3 labeled tumor DNA and Cy5 labeled normal DNA were hybridized to microarray template, and then image analysis was performed by microarray image analyzer. RESULTS: Gains of 22q13, 6p24, 7p13, 7q21, 7q31, 8q24, 17q24 and 19p13.3 were found frequently. CONCLUSION: Non-random aberrations which were disclosed in this study might be candidate regions for the abnormal genes involved in papillary thyroid cancer