Analysis of chronic lymphotic leukemia transcriptomic profile: differences between molecular subgroups

B cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a lymphoproliferative disorder with a variable clinical course. Patients with unmutated IgV(H) gene show a shorter progression-free and overall survival than patients with immunoglobulin heavy chain variable regions (IgV(H)) gene mutated. In addition, BCL6 mutations identify a subgroup of patients with high risk of progression. Gene expression was analysed in 36 early-stage patients using high-density microarrays. Around 150 genes differentially expressed were found according to IgV(H) mutations, whereas no difference was found according to BCL6 mutations. Functional profiling methods allowed us to distinguish KEGG and gene ontology terms showing coordinated gene expression changes across subgroups of CLL. We validated a set of differentially expressed genes according to IgV(H) status, scoring them as putative prognostic markers in CLL. Among them, CRY1, LPL, CD82 and DUSP22 are the ones with at least equal or superior performance to ZAP70 which is actually the most used surrogate marker of IgV(H) status.