Molecular profiling of classical Hodgkin’s lymphoma tissues

Previous reports suggest that outcome of cHL patients may be related to the tumor microenvironment, which in turn may be influenced by EBV infection. Gene profiling was used for further characterize the cHL microenvironment. A training set of 73 cHL tissue samples was profiled using Affymetrix DNA microarrays. Supervised analysis provided a gene signature separating EBV+ from EBV- cHL tissues, including genes characteristic of Th1 and antiviral response. Samples from patients with favourable outcome significantly overexpressed genes involved in the function of B-cells and plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs), like BCL11A. A validation set of 146 cHL samples was analyzed using immunohistochemistry (IHC). Keywords: Disease state analysis A training set of 73 pre-treatment cHL tissue samples was profiled using Affymetrix DNA microarrays. They were collected at the time of diagnosis from 73 different cHL patients (including 10 children under the age of 15), who underwent lymph node surgical biopsy in several French haematological centres (Marseilles, Lille, Dijon, Nancy, Paris) belonging to the network of the Groupe d’Etude des Lymphomas de l’Adulte (GELA). Each patient (or parents for children) gave written informed consent. Samples were snap-frozen in liquid nitrogen within 30 minutes of removal. All cases were de novo reviewed by 2 hematopathologists (BC and LX) before analysis.