Projects

With technological advances, the challenge for researchers in genetics has shifted from investigating (epi)genetic alterations at a large scale to translating these findings to clinic. Implementations in veterinary oncology are however almost non-existing.  

To tackle this, canine multicentric lymphoma is the ideal disease to work on: it has a high prevalence and different subtypes with variable prognosis. With the current ...

Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) accounts for 11-30 % of all lymphomas and is the most common lymphoid neoplasm in adolescents and young adults. The low abundance of Hodgkin/Reed-Sternberg (HRS) cells, the malignant cells in this disease, hampers the elucidation of its pathogenesis. Today, 10-15% of patients will fail first-line therapy and a similar fraction is likely to be overtreated, underscoring the need to better recognize the diversity of HL. ...

Although SOX11 is not expressed in normal lymphoid cells or their progenitors, high SOX11 levels is observed in mantle cell lymphoma (MCL). Previous functional studies on MCL cell lines pointed towards a pivotal oncogenic role for SOX11 in this disease, however the molecular mechanism of action is not known. We generated a conditional SOX11 overexpression mouse model. B-cell restricted gain of SOX11 in combination with loss of the tumor ...

Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) accounts for 11-30 % of all lymphomas and is the most common lymphoid neoplasm in adolescents. Today, 10-15% of patients fail first-line therapy – others risk of being overtreated, underscoring the need to better recognize HL diversity.

Given the technical challenge of purifying the low abundant, malignant Hodgkin/Reed-Sternberg (HRS) cells from biopsies, this study aims to explore the genome of HRS cells by ...

Peripheral T cell lymphoma (PTCL) is a form of blood cancer that develops from mature T cells, a kind of white blood cells. These T cells are growing uncontrollably, thereby forming a tumor that is mostly located in the lymph nodes. PTCL patients are currently treated with chemotherapy, but the chances of survival are only 30%. Therefore, there is a high clinical need for new therapeutic options for these patients. With this research project, ...

Lymphoma is the third most diagnosed malignancy in canine cancer patients and mostly presents as a multicentric lymph node cancer. Most cases are diagnosed as B-cell lymphomas (BCL), the majority of which manifests as aggressive large BCL that cannot be cured with chemotherapy. With over 90 million pet dogs in the EU and the annual incidence of cancer increasing, it is time for an update of the state of the art on both diagnostics and ...

The main objective of my research project is to investigate in more detail how N-MYC overexpression together with epigenetic deregulation can drive T cell transformation and lymphoma development.  I then aim to use these new insights into the disease mechanism to identify potential durggable targets for N-MYC positive T cell lymphomas.

Therefore, the specific aims of this project are the following:

• Aim 1: to ...