Correlation of Minichromosome Maintenance Protein 6 Expression Rate and Clinical Outcome in Patients With Hodgkin s Lymphoma

Minichromosome maintenance complex component 6 (MCM-6) is one of the six proteins of the MCM family, which are involved in the initiation of DNA replication, represents a marker of proliferating cells. The goal of this study was to evaluate the prognostic relevance of the neoplastic cell proliferation rate in patients with Hodgkin s lymphoma (HL). We evaluated the formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded lymph node biopsy specimens from 55 patients by using monoclonal antibody against MCM-6 and compared these findings with clinical data and treatment outcome. Median of MCM-6 expression was 85% (range: 35%-99%). In multivariate analysis, MCM-6 expression, B symptoms, and age were not statistically significant predictor for relapse in contrary to response (P=.001) and stage of disease (P=.048). Patients with lower MCM-6 expression rates showed higher relapse rate and lower disease-free survival (DFS). Meanwhile, patients with MCM-6 expression less than 85% showed shorter DFS (P=.031). We hypothesize that in group of patients with lower MCM-6 expression rate, a larger proportion of proliferating malignant cells are arrested in the very early phase of mitosis, in comparison to the group of patients with higher MCM-6 expression, and this could imply a shorter and probably higher relapse rate in the former group.