Numerous regulatory genes have G-rich regions that can potentially form quadruplex structures, possibly playing a role in transcription regulation. We studied a G-rich sequence in the BCL2 gene 176-bp upstream of the P1 promoter for G-quadruplex formation. Using circular dichroism (CD), thermal denaturation and dimethyl sulfate (DMS) footprinting, we found that a single-stranded oligonucleotide...

Alpha B crystallin was characterized as a negative prognostic factor in breast cancer. BCL2 has an antiapoptotic role and sustains cell survival in vitro, ironically BCL2 expression has been associated with a good prognosis of breast cancer patients. To investigate the significance of alpha B crystallin and BCL2 expression in breast cancer and the relationship between these proteins, we perform...

Genomic alterations and protein expression levels have been established as prognostic factors for survival in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). In particular, double-hit DLBCL (DHL), which exhibits translocations in MYC and BCL2 and/or BCL6, is known to be associated with a poor prognosis. However, the clinical significance of gene alterations and protein expression levels fo...

A number of anti-cancer strategies aim to target the mitochondrial apoptotic machinery to induce tumour cell death. Mitochondria play a key role as death amplifiers by releasing apoptogenic factors from the mitochondrial inter-membrane space into the cytosol. BCL2 proteins are known for their ability to regulate both mitochondrial physiology and cell death, and their deregulated expression ofte...

BACKGROUND Double-hit lymphomas (DHL) are rare high-grade neoplasms characterized by two translocations: one involving the gene MYC and another involving genes BCL2 or BCL6, whose diagnosis depends on cytogenetic examination. This research studied DHL and morphological and/or immunophenotypic factors associated with the detection of these translocations in a group of high-grade non-Hodgkin lymp...

OBJECTIVE Recent studies indicate that WT1 and Bcl2 protein are detected in melanocytic lesions of the skin. We examined, for the first time, WT1 and Bcl2 expression in a variety of conjunctival melanocytic lesions to evaluate their diagnostic utility compared with other melanocytic markers. METHODS Protein expression and localization of WT1 and Bcl2 were studied by means of immunolabeling an...

The t(14;18) translocation in follicular lymphoma is one of the most common chromosomal translocations. Most breaks on chromosome 18 are located at the 3'-UTR of the BCL2 gene and are mainly clustered in the major breakpoint region (MBR). Recently, we found that the BCL2 MBR has a non-B DNA character in genomic DNA. Here, we show that single-stranded DNA modeled from the template strand of the ...

Translocation of the BCL2 gene on the chromosome band 18q21.3 results in consistent expression of the Bcl2 protein, an apoptosis inhibitor. BCL2 usually translocates to the immunoglobulin (IG) heavy chain (IGH) gene as t(14;18)(q32;q21.3) and rarely to IG light chain (IGK, IGL) loci as t(2;18)(p11;q21.3) or t(18;22)(q21.3;q11). The t(14;18) translocation is observed in 70-95% of follicular lymp...

The objective of this study was to create a bioclinical model, based on clinical and molecular predictors of event-free and overall survival for relapsed/refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma patients treated on the Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG) LY12 prospective study. In 91 cases, sufficient histologic material was available to create tissue microarrays and perform immunohistochemistr...