© 2004 European Society for Medical Oncology
t(14;18) and bcl-2 should not be used synonmously
In their review on challenging paradigms in lymphoma treatment, Bendandi et al. [1
] used the term ‘bcl-2-positive cells’ when they were really talking about cells with translocation t(14;18).
I would like to encourage authors of scientific manuscripts to be strict in their terminology. Names of proteins are increasingly mixed up with genetic terms. In particular, the expression of bcl-2 is often used synonymously with translocation t(14;18) (q32;q21). Many cells transcribe bcl-2, a normal gene coding for the bcl-2 protein regulating apoptosis, not just cells with t(14;18). In fact, in the paper by Huang et al. [2], referenced by the authors, there was no difference in the expression of bcl-2 in the t(14;18)-positive and negative cases. The chromosomal translocation is the feature identifying the subset of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma with a germinal center gene expression profile, not the expression of the protein bcl-2.
Dr. Horst-Schmidt-Klinik, Department of Hematology and Oncology, Wiesbaden, Germany
* Email: norbert.frickhofen{at}hsk-wiesbaden.de
References
1. Bendandi M, Pileri SA, Zinzani PL. Challenging paradigms in lymphoma treatment. Ann Oncol 2004; 15: 703–711.
2. Huang JZ, Sanger WG, Greiner TC et al. The t(14;18) defines a unique subset of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma with a germinal center B-cell gene expression profile. Blood 2002; 99: 2285–2290.
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