Objectives: Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is anincurable disease with a highly variable clinical course. IgVH mutationalstatus, chromosomal aberrations, CD38 expression and ZAP-70expression are prognostic markers in CLL, however, they are notexclusively confined to this disease. We recently identified a novel CLL-specific gene (CLL upregulated gene1, CLLU1) that is excl...

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) has an extremely heterogeneous prognosis. Nowadays, the median survival of patients with this form of leukemia is 8–10 years, compared with 5–6 years in series reported in the 1970s. This is largely due to the higher number of patients who are now being diagnosed in early phase (up to 80%) and, hence, with better prognosis [1, 2]. Individual survival, however,...

Monoclonal anti-I-Jk antibodies (mAbs) were found to inhibit syngeneic and allogeneic mixed lymphocyte reactions by blocking the responder T cells but not the stimulator cells. Only the responses of H-2k and H-2a strains were inhibited. Three different anti-I-Jk mAbs (1G8, 4B11, and KN34) showed different inhibitory patterns in allogeneic mixed lymphocyte reactions of individual H-2k strains, d...

BACKGROUND Flow cytometry allows specific assessment of the expression of ZAP-70, a promising new prognostic factor in B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL), but suffers from a lack of multicenter standardization. DESIGN AND METHODS An optimized method for direct detection of ZAP-70 in flow cytometry was tested in a multicenter fashion. Adapted for frozen cells, this method includes a n...

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Activated B cells isolated shortly after primary immunization of BALB/c donor mice with sheep erythrocytes (SRBC), were transferred to normal syngeneic recipients or to low-dose cyclophosphamide-pretreated syngeneic recipients. In pretreated recipients, the transfer of activated B cells, but not of T cells or macrophages, resulted in an augmented production of indirect plaque-forming cells in t...

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is marked by a Th cell-dependent B cell hyperresponsiveness, with frequent germinal center reactions and hypergammaglobulinemia. The specificity of Th cells in lupus remains unclear, but B cell Ids have been suggested. A hallmark is the presence of anti-dsDNA, mutated IgG autoantibodies with a preponderance of arginines in CDR3 of the Ig variable H chain (IgVH...

Elevated levels of circulating angiogenic cytokines and increased expression of genes encoding angiogenic factors have been reported in recent years in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) but data regarding prognostic and predictive significance are still limited. Therefore, in the present study based upon our prior pilot results, we measured mRNA expressions of angiopoietin-2 (Ang...