Patterns of oncogene co-expression at single cell resolution in cancer influence survival

AbstractBackgroundCancers often overexpress multiple clinically relevant oncogenes. However, it is not known if multiple oncogenes within a cancer combine uniquely in specific cellular sub-populations to influence clinical outcome. We studied this phenomenon using the prognostically relevant oncogenes MYC, BCL2 and BCL6 in Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma (DLBCL).MethodsQuantitative multispectral imaging simultaneously measured oncogene co-expression at single-cell resolution in reactive lymphoid tissue (n=12) and four independent cohorts (n=409) of DLBCL. Mathematically derived co-expression phenotypes were evaluated in DLBCLs with immunohistochemistry (n=316) and eight DLBCL cohorts with gen…