Immune marker expression in 53 lymphomas of high-grade malignancy

Tissue from 53 non-Hodgkin's lymphomas of high-grade malignancy according to the Kiel classification were analysed for cellular immunological markers. In most cases studies were performed in parallel on cell suspensions and cryostat sections. Histologically, the lymphomas were classified as anaplastic centrocytic (four), centroblastic (seven), Burkitt type (three), convoluted-cell type (five) lymphoblastic-unclassified (10), immunoblastic (IBL) (19) and pleomorphic T-cell type (five). Immunological phenotyping resulted in 60% B lymphomas characterized by monotypic surface membrane Ig (SmIg) and/or cytoplasmic Ig (CIg), and 23% T lymphomas with detectable E receptors; 17% of cases were non-expressive (O-type). Unusual SmIg-types were noticed in some monoclonal proliferations. Gamma (gamma) and mu chains occurred simultaneously in four cases; delta chain was the only heavy-chain in one case and a heavy-chain was absent in one case. Cases of IBL were of T-cell type in two cases, and two other cases were non-expressive. The cases of B-IBL expressed CIg in 93%, but the B lymphomas other than B-IBL only in 38%. Receptors for Fc-IgG and C3 were expressed by all major immune phenotypes (B, T, O), but were infrequent in lymphoblastic lymphoma unclassified (O-type). Adoption of immunological techniques to include frozen tissue studies was necessary in order to reach a conclusion regarding the immune phenotype in several cases.