Carcinogenesis, Vol. 23, No. 7, 1127-1130,
July 2002
© 2002 Oxford University Press
CANCER BIOLOGY |
Alterations of the p16INK4 locus in human malignant mesothelial tumors
Department of Cancer Cell Biology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115 and
1 Department of Surgery, Division of Thoracic Surgery, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
The INK4 locus has two promoters and encodes two unique proteins that share exons in different reading frames, p16INK4a and p14ARF. The p16INK4a protein, by inhibiting cyclin-dependent kinase, down regulates Rb-E2F and leads to cell cycle arrest in the G1 phase. The p14ARF protein interacts with the MDM2 protein, neutralizing MDM2-mediated degradation of p53. Since p53/Rb genes are not altered in malignant mesothelioma, additional components of these pathways, such as p16INK4a and p14ARF, are candidates for inactivation. In this study, we have examined p16INK4a and p14ARF alterations (gene deletion, mutation and promoter methylation) in 45 primary malignant mesothelioma specimens. Fourteen patients (31%) had altered p16; four tumors had a methylated promoter region (8.8%), 10 tumors showed p16 to be deleted (22.2%), and one tumor had a point mutation (2%). We did not find any instances of methylation in the p14ARF 5'-CpG island. Patients whose tumors had p16 deletion were significantly younger than those with methylation, and, in the patients whose lungs were studied for the prevalence of asbestos fibers, those with any p16 alteration had lower fiber counts than those with no p16 alteration. Hence, p16 gene alteration is relatively common in malignant mesothelioma, while p14ARF is rarely, if ever, methylated. Our data suggest that deletion of p16 occurs in a relatively susceptible subset of the population.
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