In a large cohort of patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), CD23 expression was associated with significantly improved survival outcomes, according to a retrospective analysis.
“Mantle cell lymphoma has a distinctive immunophenotype, typically positive for pan B-cell markers, CD5 and cyclin D1, but negative for CD10, CD23, and CD200. Although most cases show this immunophenotype, some MCL cases have atypical immunophenotypic features, such as expression of CD10, CD23, or rarely CD200 or lack of expression of CD5,” wrote Annapurna Saksena, MD, of MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, and colleagues. Their report is in Human Pathology.
They retrospectively reviewed medical records from a pathology database at MD Anderson from the period of 2008-2016. In all, 798 patients with MCL were identified, of which 103 were classified as CD23-positive via flow cytometry.
The team collected data related to the immunophenotypic and clinicopathologic characteristics of the disease, in addition to survival-related outcomes, including progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). They compared outcomes for the CD23-positive group against 240 patients with CD23-negative MCL.
After analysis, Dr. Saksena and colleagues found that patients with CD23-positive MCL more frequently had bone marrow involvement (89% vs. 78%, P = .02), a leukemic nonnodal presentation (42% vs. 11%, P = .0001), an elevated leukocyte count (33% vs. 18%, P = .009), and stage 4 disease (87% vs. 77%, P = .03).
The researchers reported that CD23 expression was associated with significantly improved PFS and OS (P = .029 and P = .02, respectively) in the univariate analysis.
However, the prognostic significance was partially lost when leukemic nonnodal cases were excluded, the researchers reported.
In addition to the higher frequency of leukemic nonnodal presentation with CD23-positive MCL cases, there was a higher frequency of CD200 expression and a lower frequency of SOX11 expression.
The researchers acknowledged that a key limitation of the study was the loss of prognostic significance in the multivariate analysis. Further studies are needed to fully understand the links between CD23 expression and MCL survival, they noted.
No funding sources were reported. The authors reported having no conflicts of interest.
SOURCE: Saksena A et al. Hum Pathol. 2019 May 2. doi: 10.1016/j.humpath.2019.04.010.