Our results showed that BIOMED-2 IGK assays are significantly more sensitive than IGH assays in follicular lymphoma due to the fact that the rearranged IGKV is less frequently targeted by somatic hypermutation than IGHV, and therefore, are essential in routine clonality analysis of these lymphomas.
Our findings demonstrate that follicular lymphomas without BCL-2 gene rearrangement and expression are associated with ongoing somatic hypermutation of the IGVH genes, low activity of aberrant somatic hypermutation and elevated activation-induced cytidine deaminase expression.
Ig heavy chain variable region (VH) genes expressed by human diffuse large-cell lymphoma (DLC) and follicular lymphoma (FL) were identified and analyzed with respect to germline gene families.
To study this issue, we sequenced the immunoglobulin heavy chain variable region genes expressed by a follicular lymphoma from multiple biopsy specimens and also cloned and sequenced the corresponding germ-line variable gene from this patient.
The frequency of VH family use in FL was found to be similar to that reported for normal peripheral blood lymphocytes and is therefore also roughly proportional to VH family size.