Endothelial cells of B-cell Lymphoma and their t(11,14) expression: An in vitro study.

ABSTRACT

Streubel et al. conducted an ex vivo study with B-cell lymphoma cells using immunohistochemical and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) assay with the purpose of finding cytogenetic alterations that are known to be present in the lymphoma cells. They found that 15 to 85 percent of microvascular endothelial cells in the B-cell lymphomas carried t(11,14) translocation which is specific to lymphoma cells included in the study. The authors concluded that microvascular endothelial cells in B-cell Lymphomas are in part tumor related and therefore participate in tumor angiogenesis (Streubel, 2004). The hypothesis of this study is “if endothelial cells of B-cell Lymphomas show lack of t(11,14) expression, then they are not tumor related and not responsible for tumor angiogenesis. To test this hypothesis the researcher designed an experiment that used Immunohistochemistry (IHC), and FISH studies. First the IHC was used to stain endothelial cells, while the FISH study was used to stain t(11,14). To analyze the data, the slide with the stained lymph node sample was scanned into the computer as an image using the Olympus viewer program. Once scanned, the researcher used an outside program (Visiopharm)  to identify the t(11,14) in both slides. There were 23.5% (65/276) of endothelial cells showing t (11,14). Even though, the results of this study showed that 23.5% of endothelial cells expressed the t(11,14) found in B-cell Lymphoma cells, this finding could be representing “false positives” results due to 3-D configuration of the samples that were cut too thick influencing software interpretations of cells. Considering these limitations, the results of the study most likely are false positive proving the original hypothesis.