Application of tissue microarray technology to the study of non-Hodgkin's and Hodgkin's lymphoma

The immunohistochemical analysis of lymphoid neoplasms has led to refined classification schemes based on the profile of antigen expression and correlation with morphological, cytogenetic, molecular, and clinical features. Tissue microarrays (TMAs) are a powerful tool to rapidly characterize the phenotypic profile of a large number of samples. We show that this technique can be readily applied to the study of lymphoma by examining the expression profile of a series of 193 B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphomas (NHLs) and 29 Hodgkin's lymphomas (HLs) using immunohistochemistry and in situ hybridization (ISH). The NHL cases were studied for the expression of commonly used markers-including CD3, CD5, CD10, CD20, CD23, CD30, CD43, Bcl-2, and cyclin D1 by immunohistochemical staining of TMAs-and these results were compared with whole sections (WS) of the same cases. We found a high degree of correlation between the results achieved with TMAs or WS (86% to 100% of cases). P53 and MIB-1 staining were studied, and the results were similar to that reported in the literature. HL cases were stained for CD20, CD30, CD15 (LeuM1), and latent membrane protein 1 expression, and ISH was performed using probes for EBER-1 and-2 transcripts. The results from HL cases on TMA sections matched exactly with those of WS. We correlated cytogenetic results with immunohistochemical stains and morphology in cases of mantle cell lymphoma [t(11;14)(q13;q32)] and follicular lymphoma [t(14;18)(q32;q24)]. This extensive expression profile of B-cell NHLs and HL tissues discloses the ability of TMAs to rapidly screen a large series of cases and represents the first report of method validation for this technique in the study of lymphoma.