Publications by authors named "Saveria Mazzara"

The clinical presentation of T-cell large granular lymphocytic leukemia (T-LGLL) is extremely variable: 30% of patients have neutropenia with no associated symptoms, others present with bacterial infections and sepsis may occur. Tools to predict patient outcome are lacking. Stemming from preliminary results obtained by single cell-RNAseq we investigated by qPCR HSP and IFIT gene families in 27 LGLL patients (23T-LGLL and 4 NK-LGLL), including 11 with neutropenia and/or thrombocytopenia and 16 asymptomatic for the disease.

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To evaluate the association between radiomic features (RFs) extracted from F-FDG PET/CT ( F-FDG-PET) with progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in diffuse large-B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) patients eligible to first-line chemotherapy. DLBCL patients who underwent F-FDG-PET prior to first-line chemotherapy were retrospectively analyzed. RFs were extracted from the lesion showing the highest uptake.

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Emerging evidence indicates that chemoresistance is closely related to altered metabolism in cancer. Here, we hypothesized that distinct metabolic gene expression profiling (GEP) signatures might be correlated with outcome and with specific fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) radiomic profiles in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). We retrospectively analyzed a discovery cohort of 48 consecutive patients with DLBCL treated at our center with standard first-line chemoimmunotherapy by performing targeted GEP (T-GEP)- and FDG-PET radiomic analyses on the same target lesions at baseline.

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Motivation: Accurate classification of somatic variants in a tumor sample is often accomplished by utilizing a paired normal tissue sample from the same patient to enable the separation of private germline mutations from somatic variants. However, a paired normal sample is not always available, making a reliable somatic variant calling more challenging. screening of variants against public or private databases and other filtering approaches are often used in absence of a paired normal sample.

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We retrospectively investigated in women treated with fulvestrant for HR+/HER2 negative advanced breast cancer clinical, pathological and molecular features associated with long-term benefit from treatment defined as being progression-free at 18 months. Specifically, we analyzed on formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tumor samples ESR1 and PI3KCA mutations and miRNAs profiles. 59 patients were evaluable (median age of 67 years, range 32-92).

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The role of macrophages (Mo) and their prognostic impact in diffuse large B-cell lymphomas (DLBCL) remain controversial. By regulating the lipid metabolism, Liver-X-Receptors (LXRs) control Mo polarization/inflammatory response, and their pharmacological modulation is under clinical investigation to treat human cancers, including lymphomas. Herein, we surveyed the role of LXRs in DLBCL for prognostic purposes.

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T-cell/histiocyte-rich large B-cell lymphoma (THRLBCL) is a rare and aggressive variant of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) that usually affects young to middle-aged patients, with disseminated disease at presentation. The tumor microenvironment (TME) plays a key role in THRLBCL due to its peculiar cellular composition (<10% neoplastic B cells interspersed in a cytotoxic T-cell/histiocyte-rich background). A significant percentage of THRLBCL is refractory to rituximab, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone (RCHOP)-based regimens and to chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy; thus, the development of a specific therapeutic approach for these patients represents an unmet clinical need.

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Article Synopsis
  • The GC reaction leads to the selection of B cells that become effector Ig secreting cells, progressing into a stage called plasmablastic differentiation, but this process often results in their exclusion from the GC microenvironment.
  • Researchers examined a unique nonclonal expansion of plasmablastic elements (GEx) in the tonsil of a young patient, which displayed distinct transcriptional and immunophenotypical characteristics compared to surrounding regions.
  • The study linked the GEx signature to diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), revealing how different immune microenvironments and genetic subtypes influence B cell differentiation and expansion within the abnormal context of the GC.
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Breast cancer (BC) constitutes a major health problem worldwide, making it the most common malignancy in women. Current treatment options for BC depend primarily on histological type, molecular markers, clinical aggressiveness and stage of disease. Immunotherapy, such as αPD-1, have shown combinatorial clinical activity with chemotherapy in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) delineating some therapeutic combinations as more effective than others.

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Blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN) is a rare and highly aggressive hematologic malignancy originating from plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs). The microRNA expression profile of BPDCN was compared to that of normal pDCs and the impact of miRNA dysregulation on the BPDCN transcriptional program was assessed. MiRNA and gene expression profiling data were integrated to obtain the BPDCN miRNA-regulatory network.

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Ex vivo gene expression and miRNA profiling of Eomes Tr1-like cells suggested that they represent a differentiation stage that is intermediate between Th1-cells and cytotoxic CD4 T-cells. Several microRNAs were downregulated in Eomes Tr1-like cells that might inhibit Tr1-cell differentiation. In particular, miR-92a targeted Eomes, while miR-125a inhibited IFN-g and IL-10R expression.

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Standard chemotherapies for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), based on the induction of exogenous DNA damage and oxidative stress, are often less effective in the presence of increased MYC and BCL-2 levels, especially in the case of double hit (DH) lymphomas harboring rearrangements of the MYC and BCL-2 oncogenes, which enrich for a patient's population characterized by refractoriness to anthracycline-based chemotherapy. Here we hypothesized that adaptive mechanisms to MYC-induced replicative and oxidative stress, consisting in DNA damage response (DDR) activation and BCL-2 overexpression, could represent the biologic basis of the poor prognosis and chemoresistance observed in MYC/BCL-2-positive lymphoma. We first integrated targeted gene expression profiling (T-GEP), fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis, and characterization of replicative and oxidative stress biomarkers in two independent DLBCL cohorts.

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Regulatory T (T) cells are a barrier for tumor immunity and a target for immunotherapy. Using single-cell transcriptomics, we found that CD4 T cells infiltrating primary and metastatic colorectal cancer and non-small-cell lung cancer are highly enriched for two subsets of comparable size and suppressor function comprising forkhead box protein P3 T and eomesodermin homolog (EOMES) type 1 regulatory T (Tr1)-like cells also expressing granzyme K and chitinase-3-like protein 2. EOMES Tr1-like cells, but not T cells, were clonally related to effector T cells and were clonally expanded in primary and metastatic tumors, which is consistent with their proliferation and differentiation in situ.

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Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is the commonest form of lymphoid malignancy, with a prevalence of about 40% worldwide. Its classification encompasses a common form, also termed as "not otherwise specified" (NOS), and a series of variants, which are rare and at least in part related to viral agents. Over the last two decades, DLBCL-NOS, which accounts for more than 80% of the neoplasms included in the DLBCL chapter, has been the object of an increasing number of molecular studies which have led to the identification of prognostic/predictive factors that are increasingly entering daily practice.

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We applied digital spatial profiling for 87 immune and stromal genes to lymph node germinal center (GC) dark- and light-zone (DZ/LZ) regions of interest to obtain a differential signature of these two distinct microenvironments. The spatially resolved 53-genes signature, comprising key genes of the DZ mutational machinery and LZ immune and mesenchymal milieu, was applied to the transcriptomes of 543 GC-related diffuse large B cell lymphomas and double-hit (DH) lymphomas. According to the DZ/LZ signature, the GC-related lymphomas were sub-classified into two clusters.

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Recent randomized trials focused on gene expression-based determination of the cell of origin in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma could not show significant improvements by adding novel agents to standard chemoimmunotherapy. The aim of this study was the identification of a gene signature able to refine current prognostication algorithms and applicable to clinical practice. Here we used a targeted gene expression profiling panel combining the Lymph2Cx signature for cell of origin classification with additional targets including MYC, BCL-2 and NFKBIA, in 186 patients from 2 randomized trials (discovery cohort) (NCT00355199 and NCT00499018).

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Diagnostic accuracy can be improved considerably by combining multiple markers, whose performance in identifying diseased subjects is usually assessed via receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. The selection of multimarker signatures is a complicated process that requires integration of data signatures with sophisticated statistical methods. We developed a user-friendly tool, called CombiROC, to help researchers accurately determine optimal markers combinations from diverse omics methods.

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Tumor-infiltrating regulatory T lymphocytes (Treg) can suppress effector T cells specific for tumor antigens. Deeper molecular definitions of tumor-infiltrating-lymphocytes could thus offer therapeutic opportunities. Transcriptomes of T helper 1 (Th1), Th17, and Treg cells infiltrating colorectal or non-small-cell lung cancers were compared to transcriptomes of the same subsets from normal tissues and validated at the single-cell level.

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Background: Autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) is a chronic liver disease of unknown aetiology and characterized by continuing hepatocellular inflammation and necrosis. Autoantibodies represent accessible markers to measure the adaptive immune responses in the clinical investigation. Protein microarrays have become an important tool to discriminate the disease state from control groups, even though there is no agreed-upon standard to analyze the results.

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In this work, we propose a method for protein classification that combines the features extracted from both the primary structure and the surface analysis of a given protein. The surface analysis is used to find the amino acids that belong to the surface of the proteins. The most important finding of this work is to show that the features extracted from the amino acids that belong to the surface are useful in the classification process, since their contribution is partially independent from that of the features extracted from the whole primary structure; this property is used to build an ensemble of classifiers.

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