Aberrant somatic hypermutation and expression of activation-induced cytidine deaminase mRNA in mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma

Abstract

To determine the possible role of aberrant somatic hypermutation (ASHM) and activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) expression in the pathogenesis of mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma (MBL), the mutational status of genes affected by ASHM, including c-MYC, PAX-5 and RhoH, was analysed, and the expression level of AID mRNA in tumour specimens from six patients with MBL was determined. Mutations in one or more genes and high expression of AID mRNA were detected in all the six cases of MBL. These results suggest that ASHM and AID expression may have a role in the pathogenesis of MBL.