Claims of Diploid Cancer Analyzed

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.


                                             Mark Twain 1883

                                             Life on the Mississippi

 
Image cytometry better than flow cytometryClaims_of_diploid_cancer_files/ICM%20vs%20Flow%20cytometry.pdf

From time to time there are reports of diploid cancer, as for example “diploid” colon cancers with mismatch repair deficiency [1]. But, further analysis of what appeared to be diploid colon cancers by “array-based comparative genomic hybridization” has since indicated that about “5% of their entire genome” is segmentally aneuploid versus 20% of a control group of colon cancers without mismatch repair deficiency [2]. Colon cancers with “normal karyotypes” have also been described by Bardi et al. [3]. But, further scrutiny reveals that these normal karyotypes were either from “hyperplastic polyps” [4] or from “nonneoplastic stromal cells” [5] or were considered to be misidentified tumor cells, showing “how dependent findings in solid tumor cytogenetics are on method” [6] (Bardi G., personal communication, 2004). Thus there is currently no unambiguous evidence for diploid cancer.


                                                                Duesberg et al., 2005 



1. Lengauer C, Kinzler KW, Vogelstein B (1998) Genetic instabilities in human cancers. Nature 396: 643-649.

2. Nakao K, Mehta KR, Fridlyand J, Moore DH, Jain AN, et al. (2004) High-resolution analysis of DNA copy number alterations in colorectal cancer by array-based comparative genomic hybridization. Carcinogenesis 25: 1345-1357.

3. Bardi G, Fenger C, Johansson B, Mitelman F, Heim S (2004) Tumor karyotype predicts clinical outcome in colorectal cancer patients. J Clin Oncol 22: 2623-2634.

4. Bardi G, Parada LA, Bomme L, Pandis N, Willen R, et al. (1997) Cytogenetic comparisons of synchronous carcinomas and polyps in patients with colorectal cancer. Br J Cancer 76: 765-769.

5. Bardi G, Johansson B, Pandis N, Bak-Jensen E, Orndal C, et al. (1993) Cytogenetic aberrations in colorectal adenocarcinomas and their correlation with clinicopathologic features. Cancer 71: 306-314.

6. Bomme L, Bardi G, Pandis N, Fenger C, Kronborg O, et al. (1998) Cytogenetic analysis of colorectal adenomas: karyotypic comparisons of synchronous tumors. Cancer Genet Cytogenet 106: 66-71.