Rose-Marie Amini’s research projects on malignant lymphoma

Microenvironment and molecular alterations in B-cell lymphomas

We study a clinically very aggressive type of B-cell lymphoma called Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma (DLBCL). This is a heterogeneous group of lymphoma where the genetic characterisation of the tumor is important for determining which therapy is the best for the individual patient

One of our projects focuses on marginal zone lymphoma, a low malignant B-cell lymphoma that often is difficult to diagnose. We have access to tissues from patients and we aim to identify specific molecular changes on marginal zone lymphoma to more separate them from other types of B-cell lymphoma. We also try to find molecular characteristics that are associated with variations in clinical presentation and to the risk that the disease is transformed into a more aggressive form.

In the projects we investigate both tumour cells and inflammatory cells in the microenvironment and immune regulatory cells in the blood. The goal is to map the role of inflammatory components in the tumour microenvironment and in the patient. We also sequence DNA from the tumours to study mutations present both in the tumours and immune cells that are involved in lymphoma development and prognosis with a special emphasis on the role of clonal hematopoiesis in the pathogenesis of malignant lymphomas

T-cell lymphoma with varying clinical progression

Another aggressive lymphoma type is T-prolymphocytic leukemia, which is a distinctive and quite rare kind of T-cell lymphoma where patients seldom survive for more than a year. However, there are variants of the disease with a milder clinical development and it is important to determine the reasons for this difference.

In this study we analyse lymphoma cells from patients where material has been collected both at diagnosis and at follow-ups. This is used to study genetic mutations and clonal evolution using targeted sequencing of tumour and normal sorted cells