Purpose: The mechanisms involved in the appearance of a second neoplasia in patients with Hodgkin's disease (HD) are probably related to the genomic damage induced by the treatments administered and its repair. Here, we searched for some constitutive molecular mechanisms that in a basal manner may influence the behavior of HD patients.
Experimental design: We aimed to evaluate with the Comet Assay whether baseline, induced, and unrepaired DNA damage differ between HD patients who did not develop a second neoplasia (HD-NST), HD patients who developed a second tumor (HD-ST), and healthy individuals; and to identify, through cDNA microarray hybridization, an expression signature of genes that could discriminate between the three groups.
Results: Baseline, induced, and unrepaired DNA damage was higher in HD-ST than in HD-NST and higher in the second group than in healthy donors. The genomic approach revealed two sets of genes that discriminated between healthy subjects and patients and between the three sets of individuals. Hsp40, RAD50, TPMT, Rap2a, E2F2, EPHX2, TBX21, and BATF were validated by reverse transcription-PCR.
Conclusions: Functional and genomic techniques revealed that alterations in cell cycle, repair, detoxification, and stress response pathways could be involved in the development of HD and in the occurrence of a primary second neoplasia in these patients. Both approaches may be useful as biological markers in the clinical setting.