¹Division of Hematology/Oncology, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA

²Department of Hematology and Oncology, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Hospital, Frankfurt/Main, Germany

Correspondence to: D Xie, B-212, Division of Hematology/Oncology, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA 90048, USA; Fax: 310 423 0225

Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are a group of clonal hematologic disorders found predominantly in the elderly. The molecular mechanisms underlying the development of MDS remain obscure. In order to begin to identify tumor suppressor genes involved in these disorders, we performed a detailed microsatellite allelotype of chromosomal deletions associated with MDS. DNAs from both bone marrow and peripheral blood of 32 MDS patients were studied using 84 highly informative microsatellite markers on all autosomal arms, excluding the short arms of the acrocentric chromosomes. A high percentage of loss of heterozygosity (LOH) was identified on chromosome 5q (40% of informative cases), 7q (45%), 17p (23%) and 20q (20%), which corresponds to the most common cytogenetic abnormalities reported in MDS. In addition, a high incidence of LOH (20%) was observed on chromosomal arms which had not been previously reported including 1p (36%), 1q (35%), and 18q (23%). This extensive allelotype analysis focuses attention on several novel genomic regions that probably contain novel tumor suppressor genes whose loss of function contributes to the development of MDS. Leukemia (2000) 14, 805-810.

MDS; allelotype; LOH; tumor suppressor gene; genetic instability