During disease progression the cells that comprise solid malignancies undergo significant changes in gene copy number and chromosome structure. Colorectal cancer provides an excellent model to study this process. To indentify and characterize chromosomal abnormalities in colorectal cancer, we performed a statistical analysis of 299 expression and 130 SNP arrays profiled at different stages of the disease, including normal tissue, adenoma, stages 1-4 adenocarcinoma, and metastasis. We identified broad (> 1/2 chromosomal arm) and focal (< 1/2 chromosomal arm) events. Broad amplifications were noted on chromosomes 7, 8q, 13q, 20, and X and broad deletions on chromosomes 4, 8p, 14q, 15q, 17p, 18, 20p, and 22q. Focal events (gains or losses) were identified in regions containing known cancer pathway genes, such as VEGFA, MYC, MET, FGF6, FGF23, LYN, MMP9, MYBL2, AURKA, UBE2C, and PTEN. Other focal events encompassed potential new candidate tumor suppressors (losses) and oncogenes (gains), including CCDC68, CSMD1, POLR1D, and PMEPA1. From the expression data, we identified genes whose expression levels reflected their copy number changes and used this relationship to impute copy number changes to samples without accompanying SNP data. This analysis provided the statistical power to show that deletions of 8p, 4p, and 15q are associated with survival and disease progression, and that samples with simultaneous deletions in 18q, 8p, 4p, and 15q have a particularly poor prognosis. Annotation analysis reveals that the oxidative phosphorylation pathway shows a strong tendency for decreased expression in the samples characterized by poor prognosis.colon cancer ͉ DNA copy number ͉ gene expression ͉ SNP arrays

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Connexin 43 (Cx43) is thought to be present largely in the plasma membrane and its function solely to provide low resistance electrical connection between myocytes. A recent report suggested the presence of Cx43 in the mitochondria as well. We confirmed the presence of Cx43 in the mitochondria isolated from adult rat ventricles with the Cx43 immunoreactivity fractionating to the outer mitochondrial membrane. Mitochondrial Cx43 is mostly phosphorylated only detected by a phosphospecific antibody. Using a Ca ++ -sensitive electrode and Western blot, we showed that the gap junction inhibitors 18-β-glycyrrhetinic acid (β-GA), oleamide, and heptanol all induced concomitant release of Ca ++ and cytochrome C in isolated mitochondria whereas the inactive analog 18-β-glycyrrhizic acid failed to do so. In low density neonatal myocyte culture with no appreciable cell-cell contacts, β-GA induced apoptosis as assessed by TUNEL staining. Our results suggest a novel role of Cx43 as a regulator of mitochondrial physiology and myocyte apoptosis.

Purpose Aberrant promoter methylation and genomic instability occur frequently during colorectal cancer (CRC) development. CpG island methylator phenotype (CIMP) has been shown to associate with microsatellite instability, BRAF mutation and often found in the right-side colon. Nevertheless, the relative importance of CIMP and chromosomal instability (CIN) for tumorigenesis has yet to be thoroughly investigated in sporadic CRCs. Experimental Design We determined CIMP in 161 primary CRCs and 66 matched normal mucosae using a quantitative bisulfite/PCR/LDR/Universal Array assay. The validity of CIMP was confirmed in a subset of 60 primary tumors using MethyLight assay and five independent markers. In parallel, chromosomal instability was analyzed in the same study cohort using Affymetrix 50K Human Mapping arrays. Results The identified CIMP-positive cancers correlate with microsatellite instability (p=0.075) and the BRAF mutation V600E (p=0.00005). The array-based high-resolution analysis of chromosomal aberrations indicated that the degree of aneuploidy is spread over a wide spectrum among analyzed CRCs. Whether CIN was defined by copy number variations in selected microsatellite loci (criterion 1) or considered as a continuous variable (criterion 2), CIMP-positive samples showed a strong correlation with low-degree chromosomal aberrations (p=0.075 and 0.012, respectively). Similar correlations were observed when CIMP was determined using MethyLight assay (p=0.001 and 0.013, respectively). Conclusion CIMP-positive tumors generally possess lower chromosomal aberrations, which may only be revealed using a genome-wide approach. The significant difference in the degree of chromosomal aberrations between CIMP-positive and the remainder samples suggests that epigenetic (CIMP) and genetic (CIN) abnormalities may arise from independent molecular mechanisms of tumor progression.

Previous studies have shown that among populations with a high rate of consanguinity, there is a significant increase in the prevalence of cancer. Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array data (Affymetrix, 50K XbaI) analysis revealed long regions of homozygosity in genomic DNAs taken from tumor and matched normal tissues of colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. The presence of these regions in the genome may indicate levels of consanguinity in the individual's family lineage. We refer to these autozygous regions as identityby-descent (IBD) segments. In this study, we compared IBD segments in 74 mostly Caucasian CRC patients (mean age of 66 years) to two control data sets: (a) 146 Caucasian individuals (mean age of 80 years) who participated in an agerelated macular degeneration (AMD) study and (b) 118 cancer-free Caucasian individuals from the Framingham Heart Study (mean age of 67 years). Our results show that the percentage of CRC patients with IBD segments (z4 Mb length and 50 SNPs probed) in the genome is at least twice as high as the AMD or Framingham control groups. Also, the average length of these IBD regions in the CRC patients is more than twice the length of the two control data sets. Compared with control groups, IBD segments are found to be more common among individuals of Jewish background. We believe that these IBD segments within CRC patients are likely to harbor important CRC-related genes with low-penetrance SNPs and/or mutations, and, indeed, two recently identified CRC predisposition SNPs in the 8q24 region were confirmed to be homozygous in one particular patient carrying an IBD segment covering the region. [Cancer Res 2008;68(8):2610-21]