Stratifying diffuse large B-cell lymphoma patients treated with chemoimmunotherapy: GCB/non-GCB by immunohistochemistry is still a robust and feasible marker

Abstract

Diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is a heterogeneous group of aggressive lymphomas that can be classified into three molecular subtypes by gene expression profiling (GEP): GCB, ABC and unclassified. Immunohistochemistry-based cell of origin (COO) classification, as a surrogate for GEP, using three available immunohistochemical algorithms was evaluated in TMA-arranged tissue samples from 297 patients with de novo DLBCL treated by chemoimmunotherapy (R-CHOP and R-CHOP-like regimens). Additionally, the prognostic impacts of MYC, BCL2, IRF4 and BCL6 abnormalities detected by FISH, the relationship between the immunohistochemical COO classification and the immunohistochemical expression of MYC, BCL2 and pSTAT3 proteins and clinical data were evaluated.

In our series, non-GCB DLBCL patients had significantly worse progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS), as calculated using the Choi, Visco-Young and Hans algorithms, indicating that any of these algorithms would be appropriate for identifying patients who require alternative therapies to R-CHOP. Whilst MYC abnormalities had no impact on clinical outcome in the non-GCB subtype, those patients with isolated MYC rearrangements and a GCB-DLBCL phenotype had worse PFS and therefore might benefit from novel treatment approaches.