Lymphoma

The Gene Chip: The Future of Lymphoma Diagnosis?

Summary & Participants

As with any disease, the accurate diagnosis of Lymphoma is crucial to providing the best, most effective treatment for each individual patient. So while new medications and treatment strategies get a lot of attention, advances in diagnostic technologies are also exciting and important. At the 42nd annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology in December, there was a lot of talk about something called a gene chip -- or DNA microarray analysis -- which has recently been used to diagnose Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma. What is a gene chip and how does it work? How will it lead to more effective treatments? Our panel of experts will include Margaret Shipp, MD, who presented on this topic at the conference.

Medically Reviewed On: June 19, 2008

Webcast Transcript

WAYNE FREEDMAN: So you look at a cell or you look at a plate, and you see the active cells, and then you can determine --

MARGARET SHIPP, MD: Basically what you do is you examine with a single chip the gene expression from all of the different genes that are represented on that chip, so what you can do is get basically a blueprint of the gene activity in a cell by looking at the pattern on the chip. So then what you need to do is you need to compare it to understand how that's similar or different -- different from other tumors, from normals cells, from other types of cancer. So by getting the initial information, and then by comparing that information to similar sorts of information in other tumors and in other normal cells, you can begin to put together stories of how the tumors are different and begin to, from that, understand enough to think about developing treatments that are specifically tailored to the patterns of expression in specific tumor types.

WAYNE FREEDMAN: How many cells are you looking at on one chip?

MARGARET SHIPP, MD: How many specific cells?

WAYNE FREEDMAN: Yeah, how many genes? How many genes are you looking at on one?

MARGARET SHIPP, MD: The technology is improving very rapidly. The type of chips that we have been analyzing have about 7,000 genes on a single chip. There are now chips that include up to almost 20,000 genes on a single chip. The human genetic machinery is thought to probably be included in about 35,000 genes total. We probably only have 35,000 genes total, and so by looking at 7,000 genes you're covering a significant percentage of all of the genetic information, and very soon we'll be able, with a single chip, to evaluate literally the expression of all of the genes that contribute to that information.

WAYNE FREEDMAN: Is it safe to analogize a gene, in this case, as a switch?

MARGARET SHIPP, MD: A gene, I think, would be part of a blueprint, the information that tells you how to function. The information can include switches that should go on, switches that should go off. It's all of the information that a cell needs to operate in the same way that any machine needs certain information in order to be able to operate. It tells a cell to grow. It tells a cell to stop growing. It tells a cell to die, to not die.

WAYNE FREEDMAN: And different types of lymphoma would have a different pattern?

MARGARET SHIPP, MD: Yes. The pattern would be different for two reasons. One would be that the cells that make up the lymphoma are different, and also that there are differences between normal cells and between tumor cells.

WAYNE FREEDMAN: This is still fairly early, right?

MARGARET SHIPP, MD: This is very early. These areearly days.

WAYNE FREEDMAN: Has it affected any treatment yet?

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