Loss of heterozygosity at the short arm of chromosome 3 in renal‐cell cancer correlates with the cytological tumour type

A majority of renal-cell tumours retain heterozygosity at the short arm of chromosome 3. To investigate possible histopathological differences between tumours with and without such losses, we compared loss of heterozygosity data from 51 tumours with 1 histological and 2 different cytological classifications of renal-cell tumour. Using the cytological classification of Thoenes et al., we only found tumours with loss of heterozygosity in these authors' clear-cell category. Possibly, only these tumours arise by a mechanism of double loss of a tumour-suppressor gene on 3p, non-clear-cell renal tumours having a different genetic background. Alternatively, deletions may occur in all subtypes, in …