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We evaluated laser scanning cytometry (LSC) by comparing nuclear DNA ploidy determined by LSC and by flow cytometry (FCM) in 77 samples of human colorectal cancer from 48 patients. Both methods revealed an aneuploid peak in 30 (62.5%) of the cases, although two samples that were aneuploid by LSC were diploid by FCM and two others were diploid by LSC and aneuploid by FCM. The concordance rate for nuclear DNA ploidy was 91.7% in the 48 patients and 87.0% for the 77 samples. The DNA index was also highly correlated between two methods (r2 = 0.97, P < 0.001). We concluded that LSC provides DNA histograms equivalent to FCM for surgical specimens and has potential clinical application in pathology. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

Hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC) is a major cancer susceptibility syndrome known to be caused by the inheritance of mutations in DNA mismatch repair genes, such as hMSH2, hMLH1, hPMS1 and hPMS2. To investigate the role of genetic alterations of hMSH2 in HNPCC tumorigenesis, we analyzed 36 Japanese HNPCC kindreds as to hMSH2 germline mutations. Moreover, we also examined somatic mutations of hMSH2 or loss of heterozygosity at or near the hMSH2 locus in the tumors from the hMSH2‐related kindreds. Germline mutations were detected in five HNPCC kindreds (5/36, 14%). Among them, three were nonsense mutations, one was a frameshift mutation and the other was a mutation in an intron where the mutation affected splicing. Loss of heterozygosity in four and somatic mutations in one were detected among the eight tumors with hMSH2 germline mutations. All these alterations were only detected in genomic instability(+) tumors, i.e., not in genomic instability(‐) ones, indicating that mutations of hMSH2 were responsible for at least some of the tumors with genomic instability. These data establish a basis for the presymptomatic diagnosis of HNPCC patients, and constitute further evidence that both DNA mismatch repair genes and tumor suppressor genes may share the same requirement, i.e., two hits are necessary to inactivate the gene function.

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