A Rapid Polymerase Chain Reaction-based Technique for Detecting Clonal T-cell Receptor Gene Rearrangements in Cutaneous T-cell Lymphomas of both the αβ and γδ Varieties

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Abstract
T-cell receptor-γ gene rearrangements provide specific clonal markers for a variety of lymphoid malignancies. T-cell receptor gene rearrangements in patients with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma were examined using conventional Southern blot analysis and a newly developed polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based technique. The oligoprimers amplified a rearranged Vγ and Jγ segment (including the N region) of the T-cell receptor-γ gene, and products were resolved using high-resolution nondenaturing polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Our results demonstrated concordance between the two techniques in 10 patients with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (including nine cases of Cβ and one case of δ2 TCR gene rearrangements) and 10 negative controls. In the present study, we have shown that this PCR-based method provides a highly sensitive, specific technique for the detection of T-cell clones of both the αβ and γδ varieties and could be used in both fresh and formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissues. It is estimated that this PCR-based technique is 10 to 50 times more sensitive than conventional Southern blot analysis in the detection of small T-cell clones.