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© The Author(s) 2021., Follicular lymphoma (FL) is the second most common non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL, 20–30%) after diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). Despite the introduction of rituximab and the high response rate to first-line treatment, approximately 20% of the FL patients relapse or progress within 2 years of receiving first-line therapy. Therefore, the major challenge is finding biomarkers that identify high-risk patients at diagnosis., This work was partially supported by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness PI15/01393, PI18/00410, CIBERONC-CB16/12/00233, and “Una manera de hacer Europa” (Innocampus; CEI-2010-1-0010)”, the Education Council or Health Council of the Junta de Castilla y León (CAS102P17, GRS 1180/A/15), Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC; PROYE18020BEA), and Gilead Sciences (GLD17/00334). CJ, MES, and AMe are supported by the ISCII (CD19/00030, CPII18/00028, and FI19/00320). MGA, IPC, and CJ were supported by the Spanish Society of Hematology Foundation (FEHH). All Spanish funding is co-sponsored by the European Union FEDER program.

The Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) genomic landscape is hardly known due to the scarcity of tumour cells in the tissue. Liquid biopsy employing circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) can emerge as an alternative tool for non-invasive genotyping. By using a custom next generation sequencing (NGS) panel in combination with unique molecule identifiers, we aimed to identify somatic variants in the ctDNA of 60 HL at diagnosis. A total of 277 variants were detected in 36 of the 49 samples (73·5%) with a good quality ctDNA sample. The median number of variants detected per patient was five (range 1–23) with a median variant allele frequency of 4·2% (0·84–28%). Genotyping revealed somatic variants in the following genes: SOCS1 (28%), IGLL5 (26%), TNFAIP3 (23%), GNA13 (23%), STAT6 (21%) and B2M (19%). Moreover, several poor prognosis features (high LDH, low serum albumin, B-symptoms, IPI ≥ 3 or at an advanced stage) were related to significantly higher amounts of ctDNA. Variant detection in ctDNA by NGS is a feasible approach to depict the genetic features of HL patients at diagnosis. Our data favour the implementation of liquid biopsy genotyping for the routine evaluation of HL patients., This work was partially supported by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness CIBERONC-CB16/12/00233, and “Una manera de hacer Europa” (Innocampus; CEI-2010-1-0010)”, the Health Council of the Junta de Castilla y León (GRS2037/A/19) (GRS1845/A/18) and private Gilead (GLD/18/00063). MGA is supported with a grant from the Accelerator consortia (Cancer Research UK; C355/A26819). CJ and AM are supported by the ISCII (CD19/00030 and FI19/00320). MES is supported by Contrato Miguel Servet tipo II (CPII18/00028). MA is financed by CIBER-CB16/12/00233. All Spanish funding is co-sponsored by the European Union FEDER program.

© The Author(s) 2019., Follicular lymphoma (FL) is a heterogeneous disease whose pathogenesis remains partially unknown. Around 20% of FL patients experience early progression or treatment-refractory disease and 2–3% of patients per year experience histological transformation (HT) into a more aggressive lymphoma (tFL). Here, we evaluate the immunoglobulin heavy chain variable (IGHV) gene usage and mutational status in 187 FL cases to assess its impact on clinical outcome and histological transformation. The IGHV gene repertoire was remarkably biased in FL. The IGHV4-34 (14%), IGHV3-23 (14%), IGHV3-48 (10%), IGHV3-30 (9%) and IGHV3-21 (7%) genes accounted for more than half of the whole cohort. IGHV3-48 was overrepresented in cases of tFL (19%) compared with non-transformed FL at 5 years (5%, P = 0.05). Patients with the IGHV3-48 gene were significantly more likely to have had HT after 10 years than those who used other genes (71% vs. 25%, P, This work was partially supported by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness PI15/01393, PI18-00410, RD12/0036/0069, CIBERONC-CB16/12/00233, and “Una manera de hacer Europa” (Innocampus; CEI-2010-1-0010)”, the Education Council or Health Council of the Junta de Castilla y León (CAS102P17, GRS 1180/A/15), and Gilead Sciences (GLD17/00334). M.G.A., I.P.C. and C.J. are supported by the Fundación Española de Hematología y Hemoterapia (FEHH, co-funded by Fundación Cris in the latter case), and M.E.S. by the ISCIII (CPII18/00028). All Spanish funding is co-sponsored by the European Union FEDER program.

Chromosome 1q gains and 13q deletions are common cytogenetic aberrations in multiple myeloma (MM) that confer a poor prognosis. There are several techniques for the targeted study of these alterations, but interphase fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) is the current gold standard. The aim of the present study was to validate quantitative PCR (qPCR) as an alternative to FISH studies in CD138+-enriched plasma cells (PCs) from MM patients at diagnosis. We analyzed 1q gains and 13q deletions by qPCR in 57 and 60 MM patients, respectively. qPCR applicability was 84 and 88% for 1q and 13q, respectively. The qPCR and FISH methods had a sensitivity and specificity of 88 and 71% for 1q gains, and 79 and 100% for 13q deletions. A second qPCR assay for each region was carried out to confirm the previous results. Paired qPCR (two assays) and FISH results were available from 53 MM patients: 26 for 1q amplification and 27 for 13q deletion. qPCR assays gave concordant results (qPCR-consistent) in 20 of the 26 (77%) 1q gains and 25 of the 27 (93%) 13q deletions. Considering only the consistent data, the overall concordance among qPCR and FISH was 85 and 100% for 1q gains and 13q deletions, respectively. Our results show a substantial agreement between qPCR and the gold standard FISH technique, indicating the potential of qPCR as an alternative approach, particularly when the starting material is too scarce or cells are too damaged to obtain accurate results from FISH studies., This work was partially supported by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. This work was partially supported by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness: CP13/00080, PI15/01956,CIBERONC-CB16/12/00233 and Red Temática de Investigación Cooperativa en Cáncer Asociación Española Contra el Cancer (GCB120981SAN). MES is supported by the Miguel Servet programme (CP13/00080) of the ISCIII (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad). MCC is supported by the Spanish Association against Cancer.

[Introduction]: Molecular alterations leading progression of asymptomatic CLL-like high-count monoclonal B lymphocytosis (hiMBL) to chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) remain poorly understood. Recently, genome-wide association studies have found 6p21.3, where the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system is coded, to be a susceptibility risk region for CLL. Previous studies have produced discrepant results regarding the association between HLA and CLL development and outcome, but no studies have been performed on hiMBL. [Aims]: We evaluated the role of HLA class I (-A, -B and -C) and class II (-DRB1 and -DQB1) in hiMBL/CLL susceptibility, hiMBL progression to CLL, and treatment requirement in a large series of 263 patients diagnosed in our center with hiMBL (n = 156) or Binet A CLL (n = 107). [Results]: No consistent association between HLA specificities and hiMBL or CLL susceptibility was found. With a median follow-up of 7.7 years, 48/156 hiMBLs (33%) evolved to asymptomatic CLLs, while 16 hiMBLs (10%) and 44 CLLs (41%) required treatment. No HLA specificities were found to be significantly associated with hiMBL progression or treatment in the whole cohort. However, within antigen-experienced immunoglobulin heavy-chain (IGHV)-mutated hiMBLs, which represents the highest proportion of hiMBL cases (81%), the presence of HLA-DQB1∗03 showed a trend to a higher risk of progression to CLL (60% vs. 26%, P = 0.062). Moreover, HLA-DQB1∗02 specificity was associated with a lesser requirement for 15-year treatment (10% vs. 36%, P = 0.012). [Conclusion]: In conclusion, our results suggest a role for HLA in IGHV-mutated hiMBL prognosis, and are consistent with the growing evidence of the influence of 6p21 on predisposition to CLL. Larger non-biased series are required to enable definitive conclusions to be drawn., This work was supported in part by Grants from the Hematology and Hemotherapy Society of Castilla-León (#1 FUCALHH-2010), and the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), award numbers (#2) RTICC-RD12/0036/0069, (#3) CIBERONC CB16/12/00233, and (#4) Innocampus; CEI-2010-1-0010. All ISCIII funding was co- sponsored by the European Union FEDER program.

MYD88 L265P mutation has been reported in ∼90% of Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia (WM) patients and immunoglobulin M (IgM) monoclonal gammopathies of uncertain significance (MGUS), as well as in some cases of lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The present study aimed to develop a real-time allele-specific oligonucleotide PCR (ASO-RQ-PCR) to detect the MYD88 L265P mutation. We first evaluated the reproducibility and sensitivity of the technique with a diluting experiment of a previously known positive sample. Then, we evaluated the applicability of the methodology by analyzing 30 selected patients (10 asymptomatic WM, 10 symptomatic WM, and 10 IgM MGUS) as well as 10 healthy donors. The quantitative ASO-PCR assay could detect the MYD88 L265P mutation at a dilution of 0.25%, showing an inverse correlation between the tumor cell percentage and the cycle threshold (CT) value, thus allowing for tumor burden quantitation. In addition, mutated cases were distinguished from the unmutated by >10 cycles of difference between CTs. To sum up, ASO-RQ-PCR is an inexpensive, robust, and optimized method for the detection of MYD88 L265P mutation, which could be considered as a useful molecular tool during the diagnostic work-up of B-cell lymphoproliferative disorders.