A recently identified gene, p16, located on chromosome 9p21, has been shown to be deleted and/or mutated in various types of human cancers. To investigate structural alterations of p16 and a neighboring gene, p15, we examined human bladder cancers for mutations in the entire coding region of these genes using polymerase chain reaction and single-strand conformational polymorphism analysis. Of 50 samples obtained from patients with bladder cancer, 3 (6%), all low-grade and superficial tumors, were found to have p16 gene alterations. The alterations included 1 missense mutation and 2 single-base deletions. We found no p15 gene mutations in these 50 bladder cancers. Our results suggested that p16 gene mutations, although they occurred at low frequency, are involved in some low-grade and early stage bladder cancers.