• DOI:10.1038/35000501
• Corpus ID: 4382833

Distinct types of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma identified by gene expression profiling

@article{Alizadeh2000DistinctTO,
  title={Distinct types of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma identified by gene expression profiling},
  author={Ash A. Alizadeh and Michael B. Eisen and R. Eric Davis and Chishieva Ma and Izidore S. Lossos and Andreas Rosenwald and Jennifer C. Boldrick and Hajeer Sabet and T L N Tran and Xin Yu and John I. Powell and Liming Yang and Gerald Marti and Troy Moore and James I. Hudson and Li-Sheng Lu and David B. Lewis and Robert Tibshirani and Gavin Sherlock and Wing C. Chan and Timothy C Greiner and Dennis D. Weisenburger and James Olen Armitage and Roger A. Warnke and Ronald Levy and Wyndham H Wilson and Michael R Grever and John C. Byrd and David Botstein and Patrick O. Brown and Louis M. Staudt},
  journal={Nature},
  year={2000},
  volume={403},
  pages={503-511}
}

• A. Alizadeh, M. Eisen, +28 authors L. Staudt
• Published 3 February 2000
• Biology, Medicine
• Nature

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), the most common subtype of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, is clinically heterogeneous: 40% of patients respond well to current therapy and have prolonged survival, whereas the remainder succumb to the disease. We proposed that this variability in natural history reflects unrecognized molecular heterogeneity in the tumours. Using DNA microarrays, we have conducted a systematic characterization of gene expression in B-cell malignancies. Here we show that there is diversity in gene expression among the tumours of DLBCL patients, apparently reflecting the variation in tumour proliferation rate, host response and differentiation state of the tumour. We identified two molecularly distinct forms of DLBCL which had gene expression patterns indicative of different stages of B-cell differentiation. One type expressed genes characteristic of germinal centre B cells (‘germinal centre B-like DLBCL’); the second type expressed genes normally induced during in vitro activation of peripheral blood B cells (‘activated B-like DLBCL’). Patients with germinal centre B-like DLBCL had a significantly better overall survival than those with activated B-like DLBCL. The molecular classification of tumours on the basis of gene expression can thus identify previously undetected and clinically significant subtypes of cancer.