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Enhanced multi-FISH analysis of immunophenotyped plasma cells by imaging flow cytometry

Journal of Human Genetics volume 68, pages 515–516 (2023)Cite this article

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We read with interest the paper by Tsukamoto et al. [1]. describing FISH analysis for the simultaneous assessment of three IGH translocation partners in multiple myeloma cells identified by CD138 expression by imaging flow cytometry. This automated multiplex analysis of thousands (2.5 × 104) of cells was shown to achieve comparable levels to, and high concordance with, standard FISH-on-a-slide of 1000 cell nuclei. The simultaneous detection of three IGH partners in plasma cells is exciting and an important addition to the growing literature of imaging flow cytometry for the detection of chromosomal defects in immunophenotyped cells in haematological malignancies [2,3,4,5,6,7,8].

Some of the data reported by Tsukamoto et al. raises concerns. These are with regard to both the specificity and sensitivity of their test methodology. The first is the very high cutoff threshold for the detection of IGH translocations, reported as ranging from 38 to 42%. Such high thresholds are likely to preclude this method from being acceptable to, and applied in, clinical diagnostic laboratories. The second, is that the sensitivity achieved was only “at least up to 1%, possibly up to 0.1%”, a level that does not exceed standard diagnostic FISH-on-a-slide. The third concern is that the authors state that CD138 immunophenotyping was used to “sort” the plasma cells; this does not appear to be correct, as they have not described a process for physically sorting the cells.

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Fig. 1

References

  1. Tsukamoto T, Kinoshita M, Yamada K, Ito H, Yamaguchi T, Chinen Y, et al. Imaging flow cytometry-based multiplex FISH for three IGH translocations in multiple myeloma. J Hum Genet. 2023, https://doi.org/10.1038/s10038-023-01136-2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia

    Wendy N. Erber, Henry Y. L. Hui, Thomas I. Mincherton, Matthew Harms, Sarah Clarke & Kathy A. Fuller

  2. PathWest Laboratory Medicine, Nedlands, WA, Australia

    Wendy N. Erber

  3. Medical School, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia

    Matthew Harms

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  1. Wendy N. Erber
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Correspondence to Wendy N. Erber.

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Competing interests

HYLH, KAF and WNE are inventors of a patent application covering the Immuno-flowFISH technique. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.

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Erber, W.N., Hui, H.Y.L., Mincherton, T.I. et al. Enhanced multi-FISH analysis of immunophenotyped plasma cells by imaging flow cytometry. J Hum Genet 68, 515–516 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s10038-023-01155-z

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