RNAseq of follicular lymphoma patient samples treated with anti-IgM, DC-SIGN or an isotype control

Here we investigate the relevance of the microenvironment in follicular lymphoma by studying the effect of the lectin DC-SIGN, expressed by macrophages on B-cell receptor activation. We compare the effect of DC-SIGN and anti-IgM stimulation on FL by treating 3 FL samples with 20 µg/ml of goat F(ab')2 anti-IgM, 20 µg/ml of DC-SIGN-Fc or left untreated for 4 hours at 37°C. Total RNA was extracted using an RNeasy mini kit (Qiagen) and polyA libraries were 75bp PE sequenced on a HiSeq4000 (Ilumina). After gene expression profiling analysis we found that, although DC-SIGN-Fc appears to elicit a weaker transcriptional response than anti-IgM, the responses are closely related and encompass a wide range of canonical BCR response pathways.