The 72nd codon change of p53 in primary renal cell carcinoma was confirmed as a polymorphism among Japanese.

Abstract

The role of p53 mutation in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is not fully understood particularly among Japanese, although frequent loss of heterozygosity (LOH) has been demonstrated at polymorphic exon 4. We examined the p53 gene in 43 primary RCC samples by polymerase chain reaction-single strand conformation polymorphism (PCR-SSCP) analysis for exons 4-9 and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis. In PCR-SSCP analysis, no apparent mobility shift was observed regardless of the clinical stage of the disease, histological subtype or malignancy grade of the tumor. In RFLP analysis, none of 13 informative cases showed gross alteration of the gene. We conclude that mutations of the p53 gene are not major events in the development and progression of RCC among Japanese.