Genomic instability and oncogene amplifications in colorectal adenomas predict recurrence and synchronous carcinoma

Individual colorectal adenomas have different propensities to progress to invasive disease. Here, we explored if these differences could be explained by gene copy number alterations. We evaluated 18 adenomas of patients without synchronous or subsequent carcinoma (6.5 years follow up), 23 adenomas of carcinoma patients and six related carcinomas. All samples were measured for their DNA ploidy status. Centromere probes for chromosome 17 and 18 as well as gene specific probes for SMAD7, EGFR, NCOA3, TP53, MYC, and RAB20 were assessed by multi-colour fluorescence in-situ hybridization. An increased genomic instabil…