[A study on the transcriptional expression of oncogenes in human primary brain tumors].

The c-myc, L-myc, N-myc, Ha-ras, c-fos, and v-erbB oncogenes were used as probes to detect the total RNA of 5 cases of normal human brain tissues and 29 cases of brain tumor tissues by RNA dot hybridization analysis. The results showed that the increasing expressions of cerbB and c-fos were the highest, being 88.2% and 82.4%, respectively, the next was c-myc with an increased expression of 46.1%; the increasing expressions of L-myc (29.3%) and N-myc (31.6%) were observed in a few samples only. There was no significant difference of Ha-ras gene expression between normal brain and brain tumor. In addition, we observed the increasing expression of more than one oncogene in one sample. These results suggest that c-erbB and c-fos oncogenes may play an important role in the pathogenesis of human primary brain tumors, and that multiple genetic changes are implicated in genesis of human brain tumors.