Hodgkin's Disease Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Hodgkin's Disease, including details on causes, cancer, lymphoma, stages, symptoms.

Expression of the translation initiation factors eIF-4E and eIF-2* is frequently increased in neoplastic cells of Hodgkin lymphoma.

Rosenwald IB, Koifman L, Savas L, Chen JJ, Woda BA, Kadin ME

Department of Pathology, New England Medical Center, Boston, MA 02111, USA. irozenvald@tufts-nemc.org

The rate of protein synthesis is regulated in part by 2 key translation initiation factors, eIF-4E and eIF-2*. The expression and activity of both factors are increased transiently when normal resting cells are stimulated to proliferate, but they are constitutively elevated in oncogene-transformed cultured cells. Overexpression of either initiation factor induces a tumorigenic phenotype in rodent cells. We have shown earlier that expression of both eIF-4E and eIF-2* is increased in non-Hodgkin lymphomas (non-HLs). In this study, we performed an immunohistochemical survey of these translation initiation factors in neoplastic cells of HL. We also used Western blot to addressed the possibility that eIF-4E increases expression of NFkappaB. Our results indicate that both eIF-4E and eIF-2* are strongly expressed in neoplastic cells of HL in most cases examined as compared with weak or undetectable expression in most surrounding lymphocytes. An increase in eIF-4E expression may lead to constitutively high expression of NFkappaB, a transcription factor implicated in resistance to apoptosis and induction of cytokine gene expression in various cells, including neoplastic cells of HL.

Published 9 June 2008 in Hum Pathol, 39(6): 910-6.
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