1. ¹Department of Neuropathology, University Hospital of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
2. ²Institute for Cancer Genetics, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
3. ³Institute for Functional Genomics, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany
4. ⁴Institute of Pathology, University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, Campus Kiel, Kiel, Germany
5. ⁵Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Bonn, Bonn, Germany
6. ⁶Department of Neuropathology, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany
7. ⁷Division of Hematology/Oncology, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
8. ⁸German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany
9. ⁹Institute of Human Genetics, University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, Campus Kiel, Germany

Correspondence: Professor M Deckert, Department of Neuropathology, University Hospital of Cologne, Kerpener Strasse 62, Köln D-50924, Germany. E-mail: neuropatho@uni-koeln.de

Received 22 June 2007; Revised 26 September 2007; Accepted 27 September 2007; Published online 8 November 2007.

Abstract

To characterize the molecular origin of primary lymphomas of the central nervous system (PCNSL), 21 PCNSLs of immunocompetent patients were investigated by microarray-based gene expression profiling. Comparison of the transcriptional profile of PCNSL with various normal and neoplastic B-cell subsets demonstrated PCNSL (i) to display gene expression patterns most closely related to late germinal center B cells, (ii) to display a gene expression profile similar to systemic diffuse large B-cell lymphomas (DLBCLs) and (iii) to be in part assigned to the activated B-cell-like (ABC) or the germinal center B-cell-like (GCB) subtype of DLBCL.