Rearranged antigen receptor genes in Hodgkin's disease

Despite intensive efforts using a wide variety of approaches, the cellular lineage and clonality of the abnormal cells of Hodgkin's disease have remained an enigma. In the present study, cell separation techniques that enriched for Reed-Sternberg cells and their variants were used to generate sufficient percentages of abnormal cells to allow detection of rearrangements in these cell fractions. DNA from the involved tissues of eight Hodgkin's disease patients was subjected to Southern blot analysis to detect rearrangements of T cell antigen receptor genes and immunoglobulin genes. Immunoglobulin gene rearrangements were found in three of five cases in which Reed-Sternberg cells and their variants were enriched by cell separation techniques to cell frequencies greater than 1%. Rearrangements of immunoglobulin heavy chain genes occurred in two cases, and a lambda light chain gene rearrangement occurred in a third case. Rearrangements were not detected in lymphocyte fractions or in unseparated cells prepared from the same tissues. The putative Hodgkin's cell line, L428, also contained rearrangements of immunoglobulin heavy and kappa and lambda light chain genes and, in addition, harbored a single T cell receptor beta gene rearrangement. These findings indicate that Reed-Sternberg cell-enriched fractions contain clonal cell populations and provide a lead, at the molecular genetic level, to a possible lymphoid derivation of the Reed-Sternberg cell.