Transcriptome analysis reveals significant differences between primary plasma cell leukemia and multiple myeloma even when sharing a similar genetic background.

Primary plasma cell leukemia (pPCL) is a highly aggressive plasma cell dyscrasia characterised by short remissions and very poor survival. Although the 17p deletion is associated with poor outcome and extramedullary disease in MM, its presence does not confer the degree of aggressiveness observed in pPCL. The comprehensive exploration of isoform expression and RNA splicing events may provide novel information about biological differences between the two diseases. Transcriptomic studies were carried out in nine newly diagnosed pPCL and ten MM samples, all of which harbored the 17p deletion. Unsupervised cluster analysis clearly distinguished pPCL from MM samples. In total 3584 genes and 20033 isoforms were found to be deregulated between pPCL and MM. There were 2727 significantly deregulated isoforms of non-differentially expressed genes. Strangely enough, significant differences were observed in the expression of spliceosomal machinery components between pPCL and MM, in respect of the gene, isoform and the alternative splicing events expression. In summary, transcriptome analysis revealed significant differences in the relative abundance of isoforms between pPCL and MM, even when they both had the 17p deletion. The mRNA processing pathway including RNA splicing machinery emerged as one of the most remarkable mechanisms underlying the biological differences between the two entities.