Wilms' tumor is one of the most common pediatric malignancies. Survival rates have increased dramatically over the last few decades. This increased survival means that there is an ever growing population of patients susceptible to the late effects of their initial therapy. Survivors of Wilms' tumor have a substantially higher rate of development of secondary neoplasms compared to general popula...

We describe a stromal predominant Wilms tumor with focal anaplasia and a complex, tumor specific chromosome 11 aberration: a homozygous deletion of the entire WT1 gene within a heterozygous 11p13 deletion and an additional region of uniparental disomy (UPD) limited to 11p15.5-p15.2 including the IGF2 gene. The tumor carried a heterozygous p.T41A mutation in CTNNB1. Cells established from the tu...

Transcription factor Wilms’ tumor 1 (WT1) was originally identified as a tumor suppressor for Wilms’ tumor, but it is also overexpressed in a variety of cancer cells, suggesting a potential oncogenic function of WT1. It is important to understand molecular mechanisms underlying these dual functions of WT1 in tumorigenesis. In the current study, we report a synergistic role for signal transducer...

Congenital aniridia manifests with total or partial absence of the iris. The association disease PAX6 gene has been proven. Changes in structure lead to intrauterine pathology, visual organ malformation, malformation master regulator proteins organogenesis affecting various cells’ differentiation (central nervous system cells included). Such disorders result into development PAX6-associated syn...

To understand genetic and epigenetic pathways in Wilms' tumors, we carried out a genome scan for loss of heterozygosity (LOH) using Affymetrix 10K single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) chips and supplemented the data with karyotype information. To score loss of imprinting (LOI) of the IGF2 gene, we assessed DNA methylation of the H19 5' differentially methylated region (DMR). Few chromosomal reg...

Wilms' tumor (WT), a childhood cancer of the kidney, occurs in both familial and sporadic forms. Chromosome 11 genes have been implicated in the etiology of WT, and mutations in a gene at chromosomal band 11p13, WT1, have been identified in a few WT cases. However, 11p13 has been excluded as the site of the predisposition mutation segregating in several large WT families, which implies the exis...

Amplification, rearrangement, or overexpression of the gene for the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) occurs in certain types of human neoplasia. We investigated EGFR gene structure and measured EGFR mRNA levels in human renal tumor biopsies. Seventeen renal tumors [13 renal cell carcinomas (RCCs), two Wilms' tumors, one oncocytoma, and one metastatic ganglioneuroblastoma] and their corre...