Evaluation of B-cell clonality can be challenging in the interpretation of lymphoid infiltrates on tissue sections. Clonality testing based on IG gene rearrangements analysis by PCR (IG-PCR) is the gold standard. Alternatively, B-cell clonality can be assessed by the recognition of immunoglobulin light chain (IgLC) restriction, by immunohistochemistry (IHC), chromogenic in situ hybridization (ISH) or flow cytometry (FC). IG-PCR requires molecular facilities, and FC requires cell suspensions, both not widely available in routine pathology units. This study evaluates the performance of B-cell clonality detection by IgLC-RNAscope® (RNAsc) in a group of 216 formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded samples including 185 non-Hodgkin B-cell lymphomas, 11 Hodgkin lymphomas (HL) and 20 reactive samples. IgLC-RNAsc, performed in parallel with FC in 53 cases, demonstrated better performances (93% vs 83%), particularly in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (98% vs 71%) and follicular lymphoma (93% vs 83%) diagnosis. IgLC-RNAsc was also superior to IHC and ISH especially in samples with limited tumor cell content, where IG-PCR was not informative. Performed for the first time on mediastinal lymphomas, IgLC-RNAsc identified monotypic IgLC transcripts in 69% of primary mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma (PMBCL) and 67% of mediastinal gray zone lymphomas (MGZL). IGK/L double-negative cells were detected in 1 PMBCL, 2 MGZL, and all classical HL, while monotypic IgLC expression appeared to be a hallmark in nodular lymphocyte-predominant HL. IgLC-RNAsc demonstrates to be a powerful tool in B-cell lymphoma diagnosis, above all in challenging cases with limited tumor cell content, ensuring in situ investigations on mechanisms of Ig regulation across lymphoma entities.
Keywords: B-cell lymphoma; Flow cytometry; Immunohistochemistry; In situ hybridization; Light chain restriction; RNA scope.
© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.