Background: In Caucasian populations, the tumor cells of Epstein Barr virus (EBV)-positive classical Hodgkin Lymphomas (cHL) patients more frequently express HLA class I and HLA class II molecules compared to EBV-negative cHL patients. HLA expression (in relation to EBV) in Asian cHL patients has not been previously investigated. Methodology/Principal Findings: We randomly selected 145 cHL patients with formalin-fixed, paraffin embedded tissue blocks available from 5 hospitals from the Northern part of China. Hematoxylin & Eosin-stained slides were used to reclassify the histological subtypes according to the WHO classification....

About 50% of patients presenting with resectable lung cancer develop distant metastases within 5 years. Genomic markers predicting metastatic behaviour of squamous cell lung carcinoma (SCC) are currently underexposed. We analyzed a cohort of patients with primary SCC using array-based comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) to identify which genomic aberrations are related to metastatic behaviour. The cohort consisted of 34 patients with a follow-up of at least 5 years, 8 with metastases in regional lymph nodes only and 26 patients without any metastases at the time of surgery. Eleven...

The study of human microRNAs is seriously hampered by the lack of proper tools allowing genome-wide identification of miRNA targets. We performed Ribonucleoprotein ImmunoPrecipitation-gene Chip (RIP-Chip) using antibodies against wild-type human Ago2 in untreated Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) cell lines. Ten to thirty percent of the gene transcripts from the genome were enriched in the Ago2-IP fraction of untreated cells, representing the HL miRNA-targetome. In silico analysis indicated that similar to 40% of these gene transcripts represent targets of the abundantly co-expressed miRNAs. To identify targets of miR-17/20/93/106, RIP-Chip...

Purpose In classical Hodgkin’s lymphoma (cHL), the impact of tumor cell Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) status on clinical outcome is controversial. Patients and Methods We assessed failure-free survival (FFS) and relative survival (RS) in 412 patients with cHL and age-defined subgroups in a population-based study in the northern Netherlands. Tumor cell EBV status was positive in 34%, and the median follow-up time was 7.1 years. Patients’ median age at diagnosis was 35 years (range, 7 to 91 years), and 63% had Ann Arbor stage I or II, 24% had...

MicroRNAs ( miRNAs) are an important class of small RNAs that regulate gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. It has become evident that miRNAs are involved in hematopoiesis, and that deregulation of miRNAs may give rise to hematopoietic malignancies. The aim of our study was to establish miRNA profiles of naive, germinal center ( GC) and memory B cells, and validate their expression patterns in normal lymphoid tissues. Quantitative (q) RT-PCR profiling revealed that several miRNAs were elevated in GC B cells, including miR-17-5p, miR-106a and miR-181b. One...