Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second-leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. Approximately 10% of CRC is hereditary, and hereditary nonpolyposis CRC (HNPCC), or Lynch syndrome I, is the most common form. Lynch syndrome I is characterized by onset at an early age, poor differentiation, predominance of proximal tumors, and an excess of synchronous and metachronous tumors. In ...

PURPOSE Germline mutations in DNA mismatch repair genes, mainly MLH1 or MSH2, have been shown to predispose with high penetrance for the development of the clinical phenotype of hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (Lynch syndrome). Here, we describe the discovery and first functional characterization of a novel germline MLH1 mutant allele. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN A large kindred including 5...

Hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC) is characterized by a familial predisposition to colorectal carcinoma and extracolonic cancers of the gastrointestinal, urological, and female reproductive tracts, notably the endometrium. A genetic locus for HPNCC was recently determined by linkage analysis to exist on chromosome 2p; both sporadic and HNPCC-associated colorectal carcinomas exhi...

The hMLH1 protein, composed of 756 amino acids, is the human homologue of the bacterial DNA mismatch repair protein MutL, and germ line mutations of the hMLH1 gene have been identified in kindreds with hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer. We have detected three alternatively spliced forms of hMLH1 mRNA in normal lymphocytes and tissues. One of the spliced forms lacks the coding region of ...

Mutations in human DNA mismatch repair (MMR) genes are commonly associated with hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC). MLH1 protein heterodimerizes with PMS2, PMS1, and MLH3 to form MutLα, MutLβ, and MutLγ, respectively. We reported recently stable expression of GFP-linked MLH3 in human cell lines. Monitoring these cell lines during the cell cycle using live cell imaging combined wi...

A common polymorphism in the cyclin D1 gene enhances the gene's alternate splicing. The alternatively spliced product encodes an altered protein that does not contain sequences involved in the turnover of the protein. We found that hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal carcinoma patients who were homozygous or heterozygous for the mutant allele developed colorectal cancer an average of 11 years ea...

Mutations in the human DNA mismatch repair gene MSH2 are associated with hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer as well as a significant proportion of sporadic colorectal cancer. The inactivation of MSH2 results in the accumulation of somatic mutations in the genome of tumor cells and resistance to the genotoxic effects of a variety of chemotherapeutic agents. Here we show that the DNA repai...