We have characterized a homozygous deletion at 3p22-p21.3 found in a lung cancer cell line ACC-LC-5. Three yeast artificial chromosomes (YACs) were isolated from a YAC library by hybridization with two cosmid probes (cCI3-1994 and cCI3-1999) representing loci that were homozygously deleted in five lung cancer cell lines. Cloning both ends of the region deleted in the cell line ACC-LC-5 revealed the deletion was an interstitial deletion within the chromosomal arm. A cosmid contig map covering the entire region corresponding to the homozygous deletion was constructed by means of Southern hybridizations. From these results and analyses by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, this interstitial deletion on chromosome 3p22-21.3 in this cell line was estimated to be nearly 800 kb long and is smallest among five cell lines containing the homozygous deletion. The cosmid clones representing this region will contribute important new resources for isolating the putative tumor suppressor gene(s) on chromosome 3p22-21.3.