1071P - 3d Telomere Signatures of Hodgkin-Cells at Diagnosis Identify Patients with Poor Response to Conventional Chemotherapy

Abstract

ABSTRACT In classical Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL) the malignant mononuclear Hodgkin (H) and multinuclear Reed-Sternberg (RS) cells are characterized by a distinct 3D nuclear telomere organization with shortening of the telomere length and the formation of telomeric aggregates. We asked if the severity of these telomere changes correlates with clinical behaviour of the disease. We evaluated (mainly prospectively) the 3D telomere organization by quantitative fluorescent in situ hybridization (Q-FISH) on diagnostic biopsies from 20 patients who were good responders and compared them with 20 diagnostic biopsies of 11 patients with refractory or relapsing HL (11 initial biopsies, five confirming progressions and four confirming relapses). The H-cells from patients with refractory/relapsing disease contained a significantly higher percentage of very small telomeres (p Disclosure All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.