Lymphoma subpopulations in an Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma mouse model

To examine the existence of lymphoma initiating cells, we used an anaplastic large cell lymphoma mouse model. Established NPM-ALK+ lymphomas contained a heterogeneous cell composition ranging from mature T-cells to undifferentiated hematopoietic stem cells. To investigate the underlying mechanisms and activated pathways of lymphoma initiating cells we used gene expression analyses. These analyses unmasked stem-cell-like transcriptional regulation exclusively of the DN3/DN4 lymphoma T-cell subpopulation. Single cell solutions of three murine lymphomas were sorted for different T-cell markers. Resulting lymphoma T-cell subpopulations were used for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays. Healthy LSK cells were used as controls.