Speaker Biography

Chuanyou Xia
Biography:

Chuanyou has expertise in hematological diseases. Currently,  he is performing  Ph.D. studies at the  Department of Medicine, Karolinska Institutet. During the past years, he has been actively involved in several projects, such as studies of the role of the PDL1 promoter in Hodgkin lymphoma, the role of lipoxygenases in the micro-environment of Hodgkin lymphoma and projects related to how lipoxygenases are acting in CLL and mantle cell lymphoma

Abstract:

We previously reported Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) development in two triplets where all three were homozygotic and had a constitutional deletion in the first intron of the megakaryoblastic leukemia 1 gene (MKL1) ( Bjorkholm M et al, Development of Hodgkin lymphoma in homozygotic triplets with constitutional deletion in MKL1. Blood. 2013;121(23):4807). DNA methylation is thought to play an important role in carcinogenesis. Due to the accordant genome in all triplets, the epigenetic pattern especially the methylation status is of great interest. Four types of cells were isolated from peripheral blood samples of triplets: Naïve B-cells, CD34+ cells, switched Memory B-cells, and marginal zone like B-cells. Subsequently, DNA methylation was analyzed using the Illumina EPIC array with 850.000 CpG site-specific probes. Differences in DNA methylation were found in CD34+ cells, naïve B-cells and marginal zone like B-cells. An overview of the workflow and results is presented in (Fig. 1). In naïve B-cells we found one region on chromosome 19 that differed in DNA methylation, however, one of the HL-affected triplets displayed a hypermethylated region while the other HL-triplet displayed a hypomethylated region as compared to the non-affected triplet. In marginal zone like B-cells, we found 14 genomic regions (two regions had almost complete overlap), spread out on 9 chromosomes, which were all hypermethylated in both HL-affected triplets as opposed to the non-affected triplet. In these regions, genes related to HL and other cancers or hematopoiesis (CYGB; ISM1; KLHL22; MRAS; SNHG16; KDR) were identified. In CD34+ cells we found one region on chromosome 12 where the two HL-affected triplets showed a hypomethylated region as compared to the non-affected triplet. This region was located between gene CCDC65 and FKBP11. These DNA-methylation differences in CD34+ cells and specific B-cell subtypes may contribute to the HL pathogenesis in two of the triplets.