ABSTRACT
Flow cytometry (FCM) allows the separatation of endocrine pancreas cells into individual cell populations. A tentative and weak correlation of aneuploidy of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors with a poor prognosis has been observed by FCM. The fraction of cells with aneuploid Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) content in ductal adenocarcinomas of the pancreas and adenocarcinomas of the ampulla of Vater, although being relatively low, was significantly higher in carcinomas than in nonneoplastic tissue. Studies in cultured pancreatic endocrine tumor cells have identified the genes encoding various DNA-binding proteins specifically interacting with DNA regulatory elements in controlling the function of islet cell hormones. In the case of insulinoma, for example, half of the tumors studied displayed aneuploidy, despite that most of the patients were alive and disease free 2 to 5 years postresection. Numerical or structural abnormalities of chromosome 7 have been found in human pancreatic carcinoma cell lines.
