Suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) was used to isolate genes that were differentially expressed in anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive and ALK-negative anaplastic large cell lymphoma. In addition, this approach was applied to Hodgkin's disease cases with different clinical outcomes. SSH combines a normalization step that equalizes the abundance of cDNAs within the sequences to be tested and a subtraction step that excludes the common sequences between the target and the control. In a model system, the SSH technique enriches for rare sequences up to 5,000-fold in one round. We have isolated several genes whose expression varied significantly with regard to the tumour subtypes. There were different genes with known or unknown functions. We aim to compare the results of the SSH approach with those obtained with high density filters. In a near future, we would like to design DNA chips specific of each pathology that could be used for clinical purposes (evaluation of prognosis and therapeutic response).