Abstract
The most common human leukemia is B cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a malignancy of mature B cells with a characteristic clinical presentation but a variable clinical course. The rearranged immunoglobulin (Ig) genes of CLL cells may be either germ-line in sequence or somatically mutated. Lack of Ig mutations defined a distinctly worse prognostic group of CLL patients raising the possibility that CLL comprises two distinct diseases. Using genomic-scale gene expression profiling, we show that CLL is characterized by a common gene expression "signature," irrespective of Ig mutational status, suggesting that CLL cases share a common mechanism of transformation and/or cell of origin. Nonetheless, the expression of hundreds of other genes correlated with the Ig mutational status, including many genes that are modulated in expression during mitogenic B cell receptor signaling. These genes were used to build a CLL subtype predictor that may help in the clinical classification of patients with this disease.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1639-1647 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Journal of Experimental Medicine |
Volume | 194 |
Issue number | 11 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 3 2001 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Chronic
- Gene expression profiling
- Leukemia
- Lymphocytic
- cDNA microarrays
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Medicine