Comparative genomic hybridization as a tool in tumour cytogenetics

Abstract

The quality of cytogenetic analysis of solid tumours has greatly improved in the past decade, but a number of technical difficulties remain which limit the characterization of solid tumour chromosomes by conventional cytogenetics alone. The identification of regions of chromosomal abnormality has been aided by the introduction of molecular cytogenetic techniques such as fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). Of these, a recently developed approach, comparative genomic hybridization (CGH), has had a particular impact on the cytogenetic analysis of solid tumours. It incorporates the sensitivity of in situ techniques and overcomes many of the drawbacks of conventional cytogenetic analysis. This review first outlines the CGH method, giving details for the preparation of DNA probes and target human metaphase chromosomes together with information on the in situ technique and data handling criteria used in our laboratory. It then presents an overview of some of the current applications of CGH, together with a discussion of future directions in the field. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The impact of genomic alterations on the transcriptome: a prostate cancer cell line case study

“…With CGH, consistent gains and losses can be identified in prostate tumors and cancer lines, at a 10Y20 Mbp resolution (James 1999, Gray & Collins 2000. Currently, array-based comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH), using cDNA (Pollack et al 1999, Fritz et al 2002, Clark et al 2003, Wolf et al 2004, oligonucleotides (Bignell et al 2004) or ordered bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) arrays spanning the entire human genome are being used to study genomic alterations (Snijders et al 2001, Clark et al 2003, Lapuk et al 2004.…”

Identification of novel deletion regions on chromosome arms 2q and 6p in breast carcinomas by amplotype analysis

“…First, the deletion region on chromosome band 2q22 seems to be relatively narrow (about 5 KcM). Therefore, it may have escaped detection by both CGH, that has a resolution limit of about 10 cM (James, 1999), and microallelotyping, especially because of the large size of the chromosome. For chromosome arm 6p losses, there is no simple explanation because the region of loss seems complex, with narrow subregions of loss on top of a broad region.…”

Rapid comparative genomic hybridization protocol for prenatal diagnosis and its application to aneuploidy screening of human polar bodies

“…Since CGH was established 15 years ago, the technique has been used very successfully in tumor genetics (for review, see James [4]). Comparative genomic hybridization also would be an ideal technique to use in globally screening for aneuploidies in preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to improve pregnancy and baby take-home rates by selecting oocytes or embryos without numerical chromosome aberrations for implantation.…”