Gene expression profiles of canonical and non-canonical NF-κB signaling pathways in Hodgkin’s lymphoma

Malignant Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL) cells are characterized by constitutive activation of the canonical as well as the non-canonical NF-κB signaling cascades. We depleted subunit combinations corresponding to either canonical (p50/RelA) or non-canonical (p52/RelB) dimers in the HL cell line L-1236 and performed Affymetrix microarray analysis. Knockdown of p52/RelB affected the expression of a significantly higher number of genes than the knockdown of p50/RelA. The two sets of target genes presented a partial overlap, however they also revealed specific genes that are involved in distinct aspects of tumor biology. The knockdown of subunit combinations corresponding to either canonical (p50/RelA, experimental group 1) or non-canonical (p52/RelB, experimental group 2) NF-κB heterodimers were carried out in L-1236 cells. Two distinct siRNA sequences for every NF-κB subunit and two non-targeting siRNA sequences (control) were used for each experimental group. Experiments were performed in biological triplicates.