Visitor Seminar - Prof. Camilla Engblom

The Teichmann Research group and Babraham Institute are delighted to welcome Professor Camilla Engblom to the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute on Friday 14th March 2025.

Title: 'Spatially resolving B cell clonal dynamics in tissues'

Please join the seminar, everyone is welcome. 

Abstract:
B cells perform functions critical to human health, including antibody production and antigen presentation. B cells develop, differentiate, and expand in spatially distinct sites across the body. B cells express clonal heritable B cell receptors (BCR), either as membrane-bound or secreted antibodies, that confer exquisite molecular (i.e., antigen) specificity. B cell receptors can be defined by sequencing, but these methods require tissue dissociation, which loses the anatomical location, and the surrounding functionally relevant environmental cues. Linking specific BCR sequences to their molecular and cellular surroundings, i.e., ‘clonal niche’, could help us understand and harness B cell activity. A technological bottleneck has been to capture the location of BCR sequences, and by extension B cell clonal responses, directly within tissues. We recently developed a spatial transcriptomics-based approach (Spatial VDJ) and associated computational pipelines to reconstruct B (and T) cell clonality in human tissues. Here, we present adaptation of Spatial VDJ to murine tissue to enable preclinical studies and B cell receptor dynamics under inflammatory conditions, including cancer.

Short Bio:
Dr. Camilla Engblom is a SciLifeLab Fellow and an Assistant Professor in the Division of Immunology and Respiratory Medicine and the Department of Medicine, Solna, Karolinska Institutet (KI). Dr. Engblom received her PhD in Immunology from Harvard University in 2017 focusing on long-range cancer-host interactions involving myeloid cells (Dr. Mikael Pittet’s lab at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School). As a MSCA postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Jonas Frisén’s lab (KI), Dr. Engblom developed a spatial transcriptomics-based tool (Spatial VDJ) to map B cell and T cell receptors within human tissues. Located at SciLifeLab and the Center for Molecular Medicine (KI), the Engblom lab’s main research focus is to spatially and functionally resolve B cell clonal dynamics during cancer.