Dr. Chloe Steen Shares How the AACR-AstraZeneca Lymphoma Research Fellowship Allowed Her to Explore the Microenvironment of Lymphoma

Since she was first introduced to research during her undergraduate degree at University of Oslo, Norway, Chloe Steen, PhD, has been fascinated by lymphoma, a group of cancers arising in the lymph system and affecting cells of the immune system. Led by this fascination, she has dedicated her research and career to developing and employing computational methods for dissecting the tumor microenvironment of lymphoma, and other types of cancer.

Dr. Steen earned her doctorate degree in 2018 from the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, and was awarded the AACR-AstraZeneca Lymphoma Research Fellowship in 2019 to investigate cellular determinants of adverse risk in follicular lymphoma, while at Stanford University.

Being the first large grant she received, the 2019 AACR-AstraZeneca Lymphoma Research Fellowship represented a key stepping stone in her career.

“This award was critical in my development as a young researcher,” she says. “Importantly, it gave me hope and confidence that I had the potential to pursue research that would hopefully one day help improve survival and quality-of-life of cancer patients.”

Under the mentorship of Aaron Newman, PhD, and Ash A. Alizadeh, MD, PhD, Dr. Steen was able to develop a high-throughput computational platform, known as EcoTyper, for determining multicellular ecosystems from bulk tissue transcriptomes. They then applied EcoTyper to the most common hematological malignancy, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL).

“By systematically dissecting cell states in DLBCL tumors, EcoTyper identified five robust malignant B cell states that collectively revise the original cell-of-origin developmental hierarchy in B cell lymphomas, first proposed over twenty years ago by my mentor Dr. Ash Alizadeh,” she says. “We related this newly discovered architecture of B cell states to key determinants of tumor behavior, including the distinct cell states of other lineages in the microenvironment, as well as patient survival and therapeutic response.”

Her postdoctoral research project and the development of EcoTyper demonstrated how powerful digital tissue dissection can be as an approach to dissect the microenvironment in cancer.

Looking to the future, she believes that having a deep understanding of the complex microenvironment that surrounds malignant cells is key to identifying novel diagnostic, prognostic, and predictive biomarkers. “I am convinced that the advancements of therapies harnessing the microenvironment, as well as the emergence of single cell and spatial technologies, will provide unprecedented insights into the tumor microenvironment, enabling the discovery of novel cancer treatments,” she says.

The AACR-AstraZeneca Lymphoma Research Fellowships were established to encourage and support postdoctoral and clinical research fellows to conduct lymphoma research and establish a successful career path in this field.

Since completing her postdoctoral research at Stanford University, Dr. Steen is continuing her research into the tumor microenvironment at Oslo University Hospital, in collaboration with Dr. Newman, Stanford University. She was recently awarded The Norwegian Research Council’s Researcher Project for Young Talents, a prestigious grant for early career researchers, and was also named Young Researcher of the Year by the Norwegian Oncology Forum.

“I believe these accomplishments would not have been possible without the work I did while supported by the AACR-AstraZeneca Lymphoma Research Fellowship. I am therefore very grateful, and I hope that the AACR will continue supporting young researchers for many years ahead,” she said.