In the present study, 5/6 cases in which FISH was successful had an IGH/BCL2 fusion as would result from the t(14; 18)(q32; q21) translocation commonly seen in FL of extraoral sites.
The low frequency of BCL-2/IgH translocation in healthy Chinese individuals of Han nationality located in Zhejiang area may be one of the reasons for the difference in the incidence of FL between China and Western countries.
We therefore suggest that the relatively low incidence of FL in Asian populations is caused not by a lower frequency of bcl-2 rearrangements in healthy populations but by distinct molecular pathways developing in different geographic regions that nonetheless culminate in FL, which is morphologically similar but molecularly distinct.
However, bcl-2 expression in pediatric follicular lymphoma identifies a subset of patients in whom disease is often disseminated at clinical presentation and is more refractory to combination chemotherapy.
We report a follicular lymphoma case showing BCL2 overexpression, detected by immunohistochemistry and real-time quantitative PCR, consequently to the formation of a novel fusion gene between the 5' of the lymphoid nuclear transcriptional activator gene AFF3 at 2q11.2, and the 3' of BCL2.
These data suggest that Bcl-2 overexpression leads to the induction of activated signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) and to the induction of SOCS3, which may contribute to the pathogenesis of follicular lymphoma.
BCL2 /IgH translocation was analyzed in paraffin-embedded tissues from follicular lymphoma patients by using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis of the major breakpoint region (MBR), the intermediate cluster region (ICR), and the minor cluster region.
Immunoreactive bcl-2 protein was observed in the neoplastic cells in almost all the follicular lymphomas, whereas no bcl-2 protein was detected in follicles affected by non-neoplastic processes or in normal lymphoid tissue.
High molecular response rate and clinical correlation in patients with follicular lymphoma treated with cyclophosphamide-vincristine-prednisone plus interferon alpha 2b.
Since its discovery in follicular lymphoma cells at the breakpoint t(14;18), Bcl-2 has been studied extensively in many basic and clinical science settings.
PCR provided evidence of t(14; 18) in only 2 HD cases (6%), both of which were associated with a prior history of follicular lymphoma, and both of which were among the 7 cases (22%) with strong bcl-2 expression in Hodgkin cells.
Interestingly, all of these 5 cases lackedBCL2 overexpression as determined by immunohistochemistry, against 3 of 35 rearrangement-positive follicular lymphomas.
By N-PCR, a total of 42 (51%) FL cases showed BCL-2 rearrangement: 28 (34%) for major breakpoint region (MBR) and 14 (17%) for minor cluster region (mcr).
To evaluate the long-term results of high-dose therapy (HDT) in follicular lymphoma, with specific emphasis on the prognostic significance of polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-detectable Bcl-2/IgH rearrangements.
Follicular lymphoma (FL) is an indolent, mature B-cell neoplasm classically characterised by the t(14;18)(q32;q21) with constitutive overexpression of the anti-apoptotic protein, BCL2.
These data show that bcl-2 translocation is present in 57% of follicular lymphomas in Chinese patients, and support the notion that bcl-2 translocation is a consistent marker for follicular lymphomas irrespective of ethnic differences.
In this patient's leukemic cells, the breakpoint of the t(14;18) translocation occurred in the major breakpoint-cluster region of the BCL2 gene and became linked to the JH4 joining-region gene segment of the immunoglobulin heavy-chain locus on the 14q+ chromosome as previously observed in follicular lymphoma.
Translocation t(14;18)(q32;q21) and/or BCL-2-IGH gene rearrangements were the genomic alterations most frequently observed: 50% of S-DLBCL and 30% of dn-DLBCL.
The present data support the hypothesis that BCL-2-positive and BCL-2-negative follicular lymphomas (grades 1-3A) represent a homogenous group with different initial but several common additional molecular pathways.
Two of eight (25%) cases of follicular lymphoma but only one of the 34 (2.9%) cases of diffuse B-cell lymphoma had bcl-2 rearrangement that was detected by pFL-1 probe.
This study evaluates the utility of fluorescence-based polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and PCR-SSCP methodologies to monitor the clonal relatedness of cells with bcl-2 major break point region (mbr)/JR fusion sequences in sequential samples from patients with follicular lymphoma (FL).