| Following a marathon (5.5 hour) Viva on Friday 7th August, Dorota Sabat-Pospiech passed her PhD Thesis entitled: "Regulation of kinesis KIFC1 and centrosome clustering by the OTUD6B deubiquitylase”. Examiner: Mark Morgan (internal) and Susana Godhino (Barts Cancer Institute). Well done Dorota from all of the LOORG team! Congratulations also to: Supervisors: Judy Coulson, Ian Prior, Andrew Fielding |  |
 Part of the Power List 2020 Sarah Coupland Sarah is George Holt Chair in Pathology and an Honorary Consultant Histopathologist at the University of Liverpool. Running one of NHS England’s four supraregional eye pathology services, Sarah also leads the Liverpool Ocular Oncology Research Group and is molecular pathology lead for the North West Genomic Laboratory Hub. Her numerous accolades include a 2019 RCPath Excellence Award and the International Council of Ophthalmology’s Eye Pathology Award. “The pandemic has actually brought me closer to my research team. I used to rush between buildings, cities, and countries – but a lot of time can be saved through virtual platforms,” says Sarah. Find out more: You nominated and our expert judging panels deliberated – and now, we proudly showcase this diversity of talent in The Pathologist’s 2020 Power List. Go to The Power List 2020 From motivating mentors to trailblazing innovators, social media gurus to laboratory medicine heroes, it is the inspirational individuals who make laboratory medicine such a fantastic field. You nominated and our expert judging panels deliberated – and now, we proudly showcase this diversity of talent in The Pathologist’s 2020 Power List.   🏅 Annette Matthews
🏅 Alisha Morris 🏅 Amanda Lumsden 🏅 Aoife Meenan 🏅 Claire Currie 🏅 Grace Batchelor 🏅 Christina Driver and family 🏅 Ellie Jones 🏅 Emily Corrigan 🏅 Gemma Slaney 🏅 Hannah Lewis 🏅 Hannah Steer 🏅 Helen Papes 🏅 Helen Taylor 🏅 Holly Ashby 🏅 Jo Downs 🏅 Laura Slezak 🏅 Kim Andrews 🏅 Terry Andrews 🏅 Linda Lee 🏅 Lindsay Workman 🏅 Michelle McAlinden 🏅 Nicola Cochlin 🏅 Nichola Read 🏅 Sarah Coupland 🏅 Shelley Campbell-Birch 🏅 Steve Meek 🏅 Steve Neilson 🏅 Susan Wright 🏅 Nikhil Mayor 🏅 Laura and Julie Hole 🏅 Conor Fitzpatrick 🏅 Imogen Cheese 🏅 Klaudyna Stanaszek(Southport and Ormskirk Dermatology team) 🏅 Stephanie Smith (Southport and Ormskirk Dermatology team) 
The Research Council funded several scientifically excellent researchers. Here are a few examples: Rogerio de Figuereido (pic) from the University of Turku aims to develop more effective immunotherapy for the treatment of melanoma. In the advanced stages of the disease, melanoma cells spread from the primary site via the bloodstream to distant organs. At that stage, surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy have become less effective options. Immunotherapy boosts the body’s natural defences to eliminate the cancer cells, but many melanoma patients develop mechanisms of resistance to this therapy. Melanoma cells may produce a factor called MIF (macrophage migration inhibitory factor), which turns off the body’s natural defences, impairing the effectiveness of immunotherapy. The aim of de Figuereido’s project is to validate MIF as a tool to identify patients that can respond to immunotherapy. For those that will not respond, the idea is to develop strategies that neutralise MIF to restore the body’s ability to kill cancer cells, unleashing the full power of immunotherapy for an increasing number of patients. List of funded researchers  Congratulations Carlos! A great honour to make the front cover of next Months Journal of Pathology. Check out article here Loss of BAP1 expression is associated with an immunosuppressive microenvironment in uveal melanoma, with implications for immunotherapy development.
Figueiredo CR, Kalirai H, Sacco JJ, Azevedo RA, Duckworth A, Slupsky JR, Coulson JM, Coupland SE.  The publication is a unique proposition for ophthalmologists, oncologists, oncological surgeons, radiotherapists and residents specializing in described topics.
‘The Authors are eminent and internationally recognized specialist in ophthalmic oncology; they are sharing their experience and multi-year experience with the readers. The aim of the book is to provide ophthalmologists and specialists in other branches of medical science with the latest updates in ocular oncology. All disease entities have been clearly presents and enriched with thorough diagnostic record and graphics’. Professor Ewa Mrukwa-Kominek,, DM, PhD ‘This perfectly illustrated volume summarizes a complete overview of benign and malignant ocular tumors. The diagnostic modalities as well as the therapeutic options are clearly described. This textbook, edited in English and Polish, has a high didactic value and will become soon a major theoretical support for the management of intraocular tumors’. Professor Leonidas Zografos,  Abstract:
Uveal melanoma (UM) is fatal in ~50% of patients as a result of disseminated disease. This study aims to externally validate the Liverpool Uveal Melanoma Prognosticator Online V3 (LUMPO3) to determine its reliability in predicting survival after treatment for choroidal melanoma when utilizing external data from other ocular oncology centers. Anonymized data of 1836 UM patients from seven international ocular oncology centers were analyzed with LUMPO3 to predict the 10-year survival for each patient in each external dataset. The analysts were masked to the patient outcomes. Model predictions were sent to an independent statistician to evaluate LUMPO3’s performance using discrimination and calibration methods. LUMPO3’s ability to discriminate between UM patients who died of metastatic UM and those who were still alive was fair-to-good, with C-statistics ranging from 0.64 to 0.85 at year 1. The pooled estimate for all external centers was 0.72 (95% confidence interval: 0.68 to 0.75). Agreement between observed and predicted survival probabilities was generally good given differences in case mix and survival rates between different centers. Despite the differences between the international cohorts of patients with primary UM, LUMPO3 is a valuable tool for predicting all-cause mortality in this disease when using data from external centers. See full article bit.ly/37MRMCe First author - Dr Alda Cunha Rola (picture)  The College has launched a new blog series – called Service Spotlight – highlighting services that have made impressive changes in their practice that improve quality and/or patient safety. This is the first blog in the series, highlighting the Liverpool Ophthalmic Pathology Service and its associated Research Team.
Figueiredo CR1,2, Kalirai H1, Sacco JJ1,3, Azevedo RA4, Duckworth A1, Slupsky JR1, Coulson JM5, Coupland SE1,6.
We show that BAP1 loss is correlated with upregulation of several genes associated with suppressive immune responses, some of which build an immune suppressive axis, including HLA-DR, CD38, and CD74. Further, single-cell analysis of pUM by mass cytometry confirmed the expression of these and other markers revealing important functions of infiltrating immune cells in UM, most being a regulatory CD8+ T lymphocytes and tumour associated macrophages (TAMs). Transcriptomic analysis of hepatic mUM revealed similar immune profiles to pUM with BAP1 loss, including the expression of IDO1. At the protein level, we observed TAMs and TILs entrapped within peritumoral fibrotic areas surrounding mUM, with increased expression of IDO1, PD-L1 and β-catenin (CTNNB1), suggesting tumour-driven immune exclusion and hence the immunotherapy resistance. These findings aid the understanding of how the immune response is organised in BAP1- mUM, which will further enable functional validation of detected biomarkers and the development of focused immunotherapeutic approaches. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Full article https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/path.5384  Liverpool Ocular Oncology Research Group wishes to thank all the supporters of Andrew’s JustGiving page who have raised over £3,400 - a fantastic amount for our research group.
Two years ago Andrew was diagnosed with ocular melanoma a rare type of cancer found in the eye and sadly passed away on the 12th July 2019. We are sincerely grateful for generous donations such as these from the friends and family of Andrew, which make a huge difference to the work we carry out into ocular tumours and fighting eye cancer. www.justgiving.com/fundraising/mel-strikes-back . |
