Distinct gene expression profiling in chronic lymphocytic leukemia with 11q23 deletion

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a heterogeneous disease with regard to its clinical course. The limitations of the methods currently available for prognostic assessment in CLL do not allow accurate prediction of the risk of disease progression in individual patients. The recently developed cDNA array technique provides a unique opportunity to study gene expression in various malignancies. To identify new molecular markers for prognostication of CLL patients, we analyzed cDNA arrays by using hierarchical clustering and standard statistic t-test on 34 CLL patients. We found significant expression differences in 78 genes compared to the reference tonsillar B lymphocytes. A cluster of genes, LCP1, PARP, BLR1, DEK, NPM, MCL1, SLP76, STAM, HIVEP1, EVI2B, CD25, HTLF, HIVEP2, BCL2, MNDA, PBX3, EB12, TCF1, CGRP, CD14, ILB, GZMK, GPR17 and CD79B, was associated (P < 0.05) with the unfavorable 11q deletion and also with the unfavorable Binet stages B and C. We present here gene expression profiling that is associated with CLL patients with the 11q23 deletion. Many of the genes in the cluster have not previously been shown to be related to the initiation or progression of CLL. These novel findings provide fundamental information for further attempts to understand the interaction of the clustered genes in the leukomogenesis of CLL in order to better design treatments aimed at specific molecular target(s).