Relation of gene expression phenotype to immunoglobulin mutation genotype in B cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia

A Rosenwald, AA Alizadeh, G Widhopf… - The Journal of …, 2001 - rupress.org
A Rosenwald, AA Alizadeh, G Widhopf, R Simon, RE Davis, X Yu, L Yang, OK Pickeral…
The Journal of experimental medicine, 2001rupress.org
The most common human leukemia is B cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a
malignancy of mature B cells with a characteristic clinical presentation but a variable clinical
course. The rearranged immunoglobulin (Ig) genes of CLL cells may be either germ-line in
sequence or somatically mutated. Lack of Ig mutations defined a distinctly worse prognostic
group of CLL patients raising the possibility that CLL comprises two distinct diseases. Using
genomic-scale gene expression profiling, we show that CLL is characterized by a common …
The most common human leukemia is B cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a malignancy of mature B cells with a characteristic clinical presentation but a variable clinical course. The rearranged immunoglobulin (Ig) genes of CLL cells may be either germ-line in sequence or somatically mutated. Lack of Ig mutations defined a distinctly worse prognostic group of CLL patients raising the possibility that CLL comprises two distinct diseases. Using genomic-scale gene expression profiling, we show that CLL is characterized by a common gene expression “signature,” irrespective of Ig mutational status, suggesting that CLL cases share a common mechanism of transformation and/or cell of origin. Nonetheless, the expression of hundreds of other genes correlated with the Ig mutational status, including many genes that are modulated in expression during mitogenic B cell receptor signaling. These genes were used to build a CLL subtype predictor that may help in the clinical classification of patients with this disease.
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