Molecular Heterogeneity in Peripheral T-Cell Lymphoma Not Otherwise Specified Revealed By Comprehensive Mutational Profiling

Peripheral T-cell lymphomas (PTCLs) are a heterogeneous group of lymphoproliferative disorders arising from mature T-cells. Among them, PTCL-not otherwise specified (PTCL-NOS) is a diagnosis of exclusion, comprising the largest fraction of PTCL with a diverse underlying pathogenesis. Recently, the concept of nodal T-cell lymphomas with T-follicular helper (TFH) phenotype, including angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma (AITL) and PTCL-NOS that manifests a TFH phenotype, has been proposed, a distinguishing feature of which is the high frequency of TET2, IDH2, DNMT3A, and RHOA(G17V) mutations. Although recent large-scale genetic studies have uncovered mutational landscapes of several other subtypes of PTCLs, such as cutaneous T-cell lymphoma and adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATL), the entire picture of somatic alterations in PTCL-NOS still remains elusive. In addition, their similarities and differences among various histological subtypes in PTCLs have not been fully elucidated.

To address this issue, we initially analyzed our and publicly available whole-exome/genome as well as transcriptome sequencing data from PTCL-NOS and other related PTCLs. Then, we carried out an extensive investigation of somatic mutations and structural variations (SVs) in PTCL-NOS using targeted-capture sequencing of 118 PTCL-NOS samples. Consistent with previous reports, TET2 (35%) was the most frequently mutated gene in PTCL-NOS with the majority (78%) affected by multiple mutations, followed by RHOA (25%), TP53 (16%), KMT2C (12%), PLCG1 (12%), and HLA-B (11%). Besides them, a considerable proportion of patients harbored mutations in components of T-cell receptor (TCR) /NF-κB pathway (such as PRKCB, CARD11, IRF4, and PRDM1), other signal transduction molecules (STAT3, NOTCH1, and SOCS1), chemokine receptors (CCR4 and CCR7), epigenetic modifiers (CREBBP, KDM6A, IDH2, and DNMT3A), transcriptional regulators (GATA3 and TBL1XR1), and molecules associated with immune evasion (HLA-A, HLA-B, FAS, B2M, and CD58). In addition to deteriorating SVs involving frequently affected genes (TP53, FAS, GATA3, and TBL1XR1), we discovered several genes almost exclusively affected by SVs, including TP73, IKZF2, and NFKB2, and CD274.

Novel targets of recurrent mutation were also identified, including PDCD1, YTHDF2, and LRP1B, which were frequently targeted by nonsense and frameshift mutations distributed throughout the entire genes. Among them, PDCD1encodes PD-1 receptor transmitting an inhibitory signal from PD-L1 and PD-L2 ligands in T cells, and its loss of function seems to enable tumor cells to escape from the suppression by this negative signal. Although the roles of YTHDF2, a reader protein of N6-methyladenosine, and LRP1B, a member of the low density lipoprotein receptor family, in T cells are not immediately apparent, these findings shed light on a new biological function of these genes.

Next, we investigated the co-existence relationship between frequently altered genes in PTCL-NOS. Interestingly, mutations characteristic of TFH lymphomas (TET2, RHOA, IDH2, and DNMT3A) tended to co-occur in a subset of PTCL-NOS cases, whereas they were almost mutually exclusive with mutations in TP53 and TCR/NF-κB pathway genes. This observation reveals the molecular distinction between TFH and non-TFH lymphomas in PTCL-NOS: the former is similar to AITL, although TET2 mutations did not show higher allelic burden than RHOA and IDH2mutations. In contrast, the latter is at least partly characterized by the genetic alterations shared with ATL.

In summary, our findings illuminate the landscape of somatic alterations in PTCL-NOS and provide a novel insight into their genetic and molecular heterogeneity, which would help us to exploit a new therapeutic strategy to combat this disease.