Gene expression profiling in lymphomas by suppression subtractive hybridization

Suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) was used to isolate genes that were differentially expressed in anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive and ALK-negative anaplastic large cell lymphoma. In addition, this approach was applied to Hodgkin's disease cases with different clinical outcomes. S SH combines a normalization step that equalizes the abundance of cDNAs with in the sequences to be tested and a subtraction step that excludes the comm on sequences between the target and the control. In a model system, the SSH technique enriches for rare sequences up to 5,000-fold in one round. We ha ve isolated several genes whose expression varied significantly with regard to the tumour subtypes. There were different genes with known or unknown f unctions. We aim to compare the results of the SSH approach with those obta ined with high density filters. In a near future, we would like to design D NA chips specific of each pathology that could be used for clinical purpose s (evaluation of prognosis and therapeutic response).