MATERIALS & METHODS: In total 141 local series of DLBCL cases from UKM Medical Centre were retrospectively studied.
RESULTS: Of these cases, we classified our patients into two subtypes: 32.7% (37/113) GCB and non-GCB 67.3% (76/113) by Hans algorithm and the results showed strong agreement with the results by Choi algorithm (κ = 0.828, P<0.001). Survival analysis indicated significant difference in between GCB and non-GCB subtypes (P=0.01), elevated serum LDH (P=0.016), age more than 60-year-old (P=0.021) and the presence of B symptoms (P=0.04). We observed 12% DLBCL cases were CD5 positive and 81.8% of them died of the disease (P=0.076). Analysis on the dual expression of MYC/BCL2 revealed that there is no significant difference in DE and non-DE groups (P=0.916). FISH study reported there were 9.22% (13/141) rearranged cases observed in our population at which highest frequency of BCL6 gene rearrangement (76.9%), followed by MYC (15.4%) and BCL2 (7.7%); no BCL10 and MALT-1 gene rearrangement found regardless of using TMAs or whole tissue samples. More cases of MYC protein overexpression observed compared to MYC translocation.
CONCLUSION: Relatively lower frequency of GCB tumours and low gene rearrangement rates were observed in Malaysian population. A national study is therefore warranted to know better the immunogenotypic characteristics of DLBCL in Malaysia and their implications on the survival.
METHODS: DNA methylation profiles of five B-ALL childhood patients who achieved morphological complete remission (chemoresponsive) and five B-ALL patients who did not (chemoresistant) after induction treatments as well as four normal controls were compared on 27 000 CpG sites microarray chips. Subsequently, methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction (MSP) on selected hypermethylated genes was conducted on an additional 37 chemoresponsive and 9 chemoresistant B-ALL samples and 2 normal controls.
RESULTS: Both methods were found to be highly correlated. Unsupervised principal component analysis showed that the chemotherapy-responsive and -resistant B-ALL patients could be segregated from one another. Selection of segregated genes at high stringency identified two potential genes (CDH11 and ADAMTSL5). MSP analysis on the larger cohort of samples (42 chemoresponsive, 14 chemoresistant B-ALL samples and 6 normal controls) revealed significantly higher rates of hypermethylation in chemoresistant samples for ADAMTSL5 (93 vs. 38%; p = 0.0001) and CDH11 (79% vs. 40%, p
METHODS: A total of 82 archived paraffin embedded HM tissues with subtypes classified based on H&E staining - 39 (47.5%) CHM, 41 (50.0%) PHM and two (2.43%) unclassified molar pregnancy were retrieved. All tissue samples were subjected for p57kip2 IHC analysis and HM subtypes were then reclassified.
RESULTS: A total of 66 cases (80.5%) were re-classified as CHM, 14 cases (17.1%) as PHM and two cases (2.4%) were decidual and cystic tissues. Analysis using p57kip2 immunostaining showed a diagnostic discrepancy of 33.0% from routine H&E staining and helps to improve the characterisation of the HM subtypes specifically at early gestations which have less distinctive morphologies.
CONCLUSIONS: IHC using p57kip2 monoclonal antibody should be considered as a routine ancillary test to H&E in improving the diagnosis of HM subtypes particularly in developing countries with limited resources.