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Updated: May 26, 2026
Immunoglobulin Gene Sequence Analysis In Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia: From Patient Material To Sequence Interpretation
Published on: November 26, 2018
Multiple myeloma shows no intra-disease clustering of immunoglobulin heavy chain genes
Simone Ferrero1, Daniela Capello, Mirija Svaldi
1Division of Hematology, Department of Experimental Medicine and Oncology, University of Turin, Italy.
Background:
Characterization of the immunoglobulin gene repertoire has improved our understanding of the immunopathogenesis of lymphoid tumors. Early B-lymphocyte precursors of multiple myeloma are known to exist and might be susceptible to antigenic drive.
Design And Methods:
To verify this hypothesis, we collected a database of 345 fully readable multiple myeloma immunoglobulin sequences. We characterized the immunoglobulin repertoire, analyzed the somatic hypermutation load, and investigated for stereotyped receptor clusters.
Results:
Compared to the normal immunoglobulin repertoire, multiple myeloma displayed only modest differences involving only a few genes, showing that the myeloma immunoglobulin repertoire is the least skewed among mature B-cell tumors. Median somatic hypermutation load was 7.8%; median length of complementarity determining-region 3 was 15.5 amino acids. Clustering analysis showed the absence of myeloma specific clusters and no similarity with published chronic lymphocytic leukemia or lymphoma subsets.
Conclusions:
Analysis of multiple myeloma immunoglobulin repertoire does not support a pathogenetic role for antigen selection in this tumor.
