FREE LAMININ IN THE EXTRACELLULAR-MATRIX OF B-CELL NON-HODGKINS-LYMPHOMAS

The authors show that in the perivascular stroma of B-cell non-Hodgkin 's lymphomas (B-NHL) is present a granular, speckled pattern of expres sion of laminin, similar to the 'free-laminin' firstly described by Lu gassy et al. (1997) in human melanoma. The role of this form of lamini n may be to promote the migration of tumor cells, which express a vari ety of binding-laminin surface proteins, whose expression is significa ntly increased in several human cancer models.