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Article
Nature Genetics  3, 62 - 66 (1993)
doi:10.1038/ng0193-62

Neurofibromatosis type 1 gene mutations in neuroblastoma

Inge The1, 2, Anita E. Murthy1, Gregory E. Hannigan1, Lee B. Jacoby1, Anil G. Menon1, 3, James F. Gusella1 & Andre Bernards1, 2

  1Molecular Neurogenetics Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, MGH East, Building 149, 13th St. Charlestown Massachusetts 02129, USA

  2Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, MGH East, Building 149, 13th St. Charlestown, Massachusetts 02129, USA

  3Present address: Dept. of Molecular Genetics, University of Cincinnati Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH 45267-0524, USA

 Correspondence should be addressed to A.B.

The introduction of human chromosome 17 suppresses the tumourigenicity of a neuroblastoma cell line in the absence of any effects on in vitro growth and the neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) gene may be responsible. Here we report that 4 out of 10 human neuroblastoma lines express little or no neurofibromin and that two of these lines show evidence of NF1 mutations, providing further proof that NF1 mutations occur in tumours that are not commonly found in NF1 patients. We also show that NF1 deficient neuroblastomas show only moderately elevated ras−GTP levels, in contrast to NF1 tumour cells, indicating that neurofibromin contributes differently to the negative regulation of ras in different cell types

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ISSN: 1061-4036
EISSN: 1546-1718
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