Epigenetic upregulation of B-cell inappropriate genes induces extinction of B-cell program in classical Hodgkin lymphoma

A unique feature of the tumour cells (Hodgkin/Reed-Sternberg (HRS)) of classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) is the loss of their B-cell phenotype despite their B-cell origin. Several lines of evidence suggest that epigenomic events, especially promoter DNA-methylation, are involved in this silencing of many B-cell associated genes. Here we show that DNA-demethylation alone or in conjunction with histone-acetylation is not able to reconstitute the B-cell gene expression program in cultured HRS cells. Instead, combined DNA-demethylation and histone-acetylation of B cells induce a nearly complete extinction of their B-cell expression program and a tremendous up-regulation of numerous cHL characteristic genes including key players such as Id2 known to be involved in the suppression of the B-cell phenotype. Since the up-regulation of cHL characteristic genes and the extinction of the B-cell expression program occurred simultaneously, epigenetic changes may also be responsible for the malignant transformation of cHL. The epigenetic up-regulation of cHL characteristic genes thus play - in addition to promoter DNA-hypermethylation of B-cell associated genes a pivotal role for the reprogramming of HRS cells and explain why DNA-demethylation alone is unable to reconstitute the B-cell expression program in HRS cells.

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Ehlers A, Oker E, Bentink S, Lenze D, Stein H, Hummel M