Email: r.tooze@leeds.ac.uk

Research profile and key clinical specialties

My research focuses on understanding the process of how B-cells differentiate into plasma cells in the immune system, and how this process is corrupted to generate immune system cancers including lymphoma and myeloma.

There is a particular focus on transcriptional control and the relationship to survival niche factors governing the lifespan and functional specialisation of differentiated plasma cells. We aim to link an understanding of normal and aberrant control of the differentiation process to the identification and evaluation of new approaches to treatment, clinical diagnosis and biomarkers.

Two general themes are the development of model systems and the integration of both in house and public data sets with bioinformatics approaches.

We collaborate particularly with clinical colleagues at the Haematological Malignancy Diagnostic Service, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, and the bioinformatics laboratory of Prof David Westhead, University of Leeds.

Two key publications

• Care MA, Stephenson SJ, Barnes NA, Fan I, Zougman A, El-Sherbiny YM, Vital EM, Westhead DR, Tooze RM, Doody GM. (2016) J Immunol. Network Analysis Identifies Proinflammatory Plasma Cell Polarization for Secretion of ISG15 in Human Autoimmunity. 2016 Aug 15;197(4):1447-59. doi: 10.4049/jimmunol.1600624.
• Care MA, Cocco M, Laye JP, Barnes N, Huang Y, Wang M, Barrans S, Du M, Jack A, Westhead DR, Doody GM, Tooze RM. SPIB and BATF provide alternate determinants of IRF4 occupancy in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma linked to disease heterogeneity. Nucleic Acids Res. 2014;42(12):7591-610.

Possible PhD projects

• Investigating the origins of human plasma cell heterogeneity.

More information

I have been Director of the Cancer Research UK Leeds Centre from December 2015.

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Keywords: B-cells, lymphoma, Proinflammatory plasma cell, bioinformatics, Haematological Malignancy Diagnostic, plasma, heterogeneity, Reuben, Tooze, Leeds

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