Somatostatin Receptors in Malignant Lymphomas: Targets for Radiotherapy?

Somatostatin (SS) receptor (sst) scintigraphy is widely used in the visualization of neuroendocrine tumors expressing sst, and radiotherapy using radionuclide-labeled SS analogs has been introduced for treatment of patients with neuroendo-crine tumors. Previous sst scintigraphy studies revealed that malignant lymphomas can also be visualized using this tech-nique. The question has been addressed whether lymphomas might also be possible targets for radiotherapy using radio-nuclide-labeled SS analogs. Therefore, we investigated in vitro the characteristics of lymphoma tissues and lymphoid cell lines to evaluate whether lymphomas can be targets for radiotherapy. Methods: Six orbital lymphomas, 2 Hodgkin’s lymphomas, and 2 non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas from the neck region were collected. Reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and quantitative RT-PCR were per