Identified hidden genomic changes in mantle cell lymphoma using high-resolution single nucleotide polymorphism...

Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is a lymphoma characterized by aberrant activation of CCND1/cyclin D1 followed by sequential genetic abnormalities. Genomic abnormalities in MCL have been extensively examined by classical cytogenetics and microarray-based comparative genomic hybridization techniques, pointing out a number of alterations in genomic regions that correlate with the neoplastic phenotype and survival. Recently, single nucleotide polymorphism genomic microarrays (SNP-chip) have been developed and used for analysis of cancer genomics. This technique allows detection of genomic changes with higher resolution, including loss of heterozygosity without changes of gene dosage, so-called acquired uniparental disomy (aUPD).

We have examined 33 samples of MCL (28 primary MCL and 5 cell lines) using the 250,000 SNP-chip from Affymetrix.

Known alterations were confirmed by SNP arrays, including deletion of INK4A/ARF, duplication/amplification of MYC, deletion of ATM, and deletion of TP53. We also identified a duplication/amplification that occurred at 13q involving oncogenic microRNA, miR17-92. We found other genomic abnormalities, including duplication/amplification of cyclin D1, del(1p), del(6q), dup(3q) and dup(18q). Our SNP-chip analysis detected these abnormalities at high resolution, allowing us to narrow the size of the commonly deleted regions, including 1p and 6q. Our SNP-chip analysis detected a number of aUPD sites, including whole chromosome 9 aUPD and 9p aUPD. We also found an MCL case with 19p, leading to homozygous deletion of TNFSF genes.

SNP-chip analysis detected in MCL very small genomic gains/losses, as well as aUPDs, which could not be detected by more conventional methods.