He trained in oncology at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, where he was an Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) Clinical Research Fellow and completed his doctoral research on the Bcl-2 gene, its potential as a therapeutic target in lymphoma and the effects of CD40 ligation on the B-cell surface.
Our data provide evidence that CD19 plays an important role in transmitting survival and proliferation signals downstream of CD40 and therefore might be an interesting therapeutic target for the treatment of lymphoma undergoing chronic CD40 signaling.
Combined analysis of miRNAs and the gene expression profile, paired with bioinformatics target prediction (miRBase and TargetScan), revealed a series of genes and pathways potentially targeted by a small number of miRNAs, including essential pathways for lymphoma survival such as CD40, mitogen-activated protein kinase and NF-kappaB.
We hypothesized that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in TNFRSF5 and TNFSF5 encoding the CD40 and CD154 proteins, respectively, influence lymphoma risk, particularly a functional TNFRSF5 SNP (-1C>T, rs1883832) associated with reduced B-cell CD40 expression.
Modulating the nuclear function of CD40 and c-Rel could reveal new mechanisms in LBCL pathophysiology and provide potential new targets for lymphoma therapy.
JLP119 human B-lymphoma cells were treated with etoposide (40 microM) and then cultured in the presence of an activating anti-CD40 antibody, vascular cellular adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1)-to activate VLA-4 (alpha4beta1) integrin, and interleukin 4.