About Me
Maria Tsagiopoulou is a postdoctoral researcher at CNAG/CRG on the team of Dr. Ivo Gut. After her BSc in Molecular biology and genetics in 2013, she received her Ph.D. degree from the Biology department of National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in collaboration with the INAB/CERTH in 2019, working under the supervision of Dr. Kostas Stamatopoulos. Her Ph.D. thesis was entitled: «Epigenetic mechanisms in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)» and was granted by the State Scholarships Foundation of Greece which included 3 publications in the field of epigenetics in CLL. Within the frame of her Ph.D., she established a close collaboration with the team of Dr. Martin-Subero. Their collaboration started in 2017 with a mobility grant from the European Hematology Association and is still ongoing with a shared project about histone acetylation profiles of stereotyped subsets in CLL. Her research interests extend to bioinformatics, and she participated in bioinformatics courses to strengthen her bioinformatics expertise (Wellcome Sanger Institute, EMBO Courses, and EMBL-EBI). In her first position as a Postdoc, graded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation with a fellowship of excellence for junior researchers, she was working in the team of Dr. Fotis Psomopoulos. Through this position, she developed new bioinformatics tools using R and machine learning approaches for analyzing or integrating high-throughput data. Moreover, her research interests also include the better use of publicly available high throughput data, in support of open science and reproducibility of scientific results. In this context, she is currently working on the state of the art single-cell technologies studying the immune landscape through different tissues using publicly available data. Finally, she is involved in several data-related training activities such as the activities of the Research Data Alliance which is a global data-sharing community. She has been co-teaching at the CODATA-RDA/ ELIXIR Research Data Science Advanced Workshops on the Advanced Bioinformatics workshop and she is an Instructor of The Carpentries. Recently, she was awarded as an Early Career on RDA Europe in which she is a co-chair of the Interest Group “Early Career and Engagement” (2021-today).
Projects
Analysis of the transcriptional landscape of 114275 immune cells in 14 different organs/tissues with a special focus on the unique and shared features that characterized the different organs/tissues regarding the same immune cell types.
InterTADs is an open-source tool written in R, for integrating multi-omics data (e.g. DNA methylation, expression, mutation) from the same physical source (e.g. patient) taking into account the chromatin configuration of the genome, i.e. the topologically associating domains (TADs).
In CLL, subsets of patients carrying stereotyped B cell receptors (BcR) share similar biological and clinical features independently of IGHV gene somatic hypermutation status. Although the chromatin landscape of CLL as a whole has been recently characterized, it remains largely unexplored in stereotyped cases. Here, we analyzed the active chromatin regulatory landscape of 3 major CLL stereotyped subsets associated with clinical aggressiveness.
DNA methylation studies in CLL
Altogether, this project confirms the significance of DNA methylation in CLL,
provides insight into the mechanism of the progression and relapse and further unravels
the DNA methylation landscape in cytogenetic subgroups and stereotyped subsets of CLL.
Awards
Travel grant, EUROPEAN HEMATOLOGY ASSOCIATION (EHA)
June 2022
Travel grant for Congress of EHA (Vienna)
Seal of excellence from Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions call HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01-01
2021
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2021
Scholarship for junior researchers from Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation
April 2019 – April 2021
Early Career Fellowship
Early Career Researcher grant, Research Data Alliance (RDA)
September 2019
Early Career Researcher grant
Travel grant from «Onassis Foundation»
June 2018
Travel grant from «Onassis Foundation» for the lectures 2018 Lectures in Biology and Chemistry, “Eukaryotic Transcription and its Regulation”.
Travel grant, EUROPEAN HEMATOLOGY ASSOCIATION (EHA)
June 2018
Travel grant for 23rd Congress of EHA (Stockholm)
Junior short-term collaboration award, EUROPEAN HEMATOLOGY ASSOCIATION (EHA)
June 2017
Study the DNA Methylation Profile of Subgroups of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Cases Based on their Chromosomal Aberrations
Fellowship from State Scholarships Foundation (IKY)
May 2017 - May 2019
PhD fellowship
Best oral presentation award, 28th Hellenic Hematology Congress
November 2017
Maria Tsagiopoulou, Nikos Papakonstantinou, Theodoros Moysiadis, et al. Overtime analysis of DNA methylation profiles in chronic lymphocytic leukemia- the evolution of epigenetic profile after treatment with FCR
«Arkagathos Gouttas» Prize (Award), 26th Hellenic Ηematology Congress
November 2015
Stavroula Ntoufa, Nikos Papakonstantinou, Maria Tsagiopoulou, Theodoros Moisiadis, et al. Distinct methylation patterns in subgroups of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia reveal tp63 as a new player in clinical aggressiveness
Education
Democritus university of thrace
Molecular Biology and Genetics
2009-2014
BSc
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Biology
2014-2019
PhD
Publications
My early work focused on the epigenetic mechanisms and their implication in gene expression of specific genes in chronic lymphocytic leukemia • Maria Tsagiopoulou, Nikolaos Pechlivanis, MC Maniou, Psomopoulos Fotis, InterTADs: integration of multi-omics data on topologically associated domains, application to chronic lymphocytic leukemia. NAR Genom Bioinform, 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/nargab/lqab121 • Maria Tsagiopoulou, Vicente Chapaprieta, Martí Duran-Ferrer, et al., Chronic lymphocytic leukemias with trisomy 12 show a distinct DNA methylation profile linked to altered chromatin activation, Haematologica, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3324/haematol.2019.240721 • Andigoni Malousi, Sofia Kouidou, Maria Tsagiopoulou, et al., “MeinteR: A framework to prioritize DNA methylation aberrations based on conformational and cis-regulatory element enrichment”, Scientific Reports, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55453-8 • Maria Tsagiopoulou, Nikos Papakonstantinou, Theodoros Moisiadis, et al., “DNA methylation profiles in chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients treated with chemoimmunotherapy”, Clin Epigenetics, 2019 Dec 2;11(1):177. doi: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13148-019-0783-1 • Nikos Papakonstantinou, Stavroula Ntoufa, Maria Tsagiopoulou*, et al., “Integrated epigenomic and transcriptomic analysis reveals TP63 as a novel player in clinically aggressive chronic lymphocytic leukemia”, International Journal of Cancer, 2018, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ijc.31999, *Equally first authors I have participated in collaborative projects analyzing NGS data with a special focus on hematological malignancies • Stamatia Laidou, Dionisis Grigoriadis, Sofia Papanikolaou, Spyros Foutadakis, Stavroula Ntoufa, Maria Tsagiopoulou, et.al. The TΑp63/BCL2 axis represents a novel mechanism of clinical aggressiveness in chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Blood Adv. 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.1182/bloodadvances.2021006348 • Marina Gerousi, Fotis Psomopoulos, Konstantia Kotta, Maria Tsagiopoulou, et.al., The Calcitriol/Vitamin D Receptor System Regulates Key Immune Signaling Pathways in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, Cancers, 2021, https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers13020285 • Maria Velegraki, Nikos Papakonstantinou, Lydia Kalaitzaki, Stavroula Ntoufa, Stamatia Laidou, Maria Tsagiopoulou, et al., Increased proportion and altered properties of intermediate monocytes in the peripheral blood of patients with lower risk Myelodysplastic Syndrome, Blood Cells, Molecules, and Diseases, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bcmd.2020.102507 • Katerina Gemenetzi, Fotis Psomopoulos, Alejandra Carriles, Maria Gounari, Claudia Minici, Karla Plevova, Lesley A Sutton, Maria Tsagiopoulou, et al., Higher order immunoglobulin repertoire restrictions in CLL: the illustrative case of stereotyped subsets #2 and #169, Blood, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1182/blood.2020005216 • Stamatia Laidou, Gregorio Alanis-Lobato, Jan Pribyl, Tamás Raskó, Boris Tichy, Kamil Mikulasek, Maria Tsagiopoulou, et al., Nuclear inclusions of pathogenic ataxin-1 induce oxidative stress and perturb the protein synthesis machinery, et al., Redox Biology, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.redox.2020.101458 • Eleni Gavriilaki, Tasoula Touloumenidou, Ioanna Sakellari, Ioannis Batsis, Despina Mallouri, Fotis Psomopoulos, Maria Tsagiopoulou, et al., Pre-transplant genetic susceptibility: clinical relevance in transplant-associated thrombotic microangiopathy. Thrombosis and Haemostasis, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0040-1702225 Finally, I developed or supervised the development of new bioinformatics tools using R and machine learning approaches for analyzing or integrating high-throughput data • Maria Tsagiopoulou, Nikolaos Pechlivanis, MC Maniou, Psomopoulos Fotis, InterTADs: integration of multi-omics data on topologically associated domains, application to chronic lymphocytic leukemia. NAR Genom Bioinform, 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/nargab/lqab121 • Nikolaos Pechlivanis, Maria Tsagiopoulou, MC Maniou, et al. Detecting SARS-CoV-2 lineages and mutational load in municipal wastewater and a use-case in the metropolitan area of Thessaloniki, Greece. Sci Rep., 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-06625-6 • Maria Tsagiopoulou, Anastasis Togkousidis, Nikolaos Pechlivanis, et. al., miRkit: R Framework Analyzing miRNA PCR Array Data, BMC Res Notes, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1186/s13104-021-05788-1 • Nikolaos Pechlivanis, Anastasios Togkousidis, Maria Tsagiopoulou, et. al., A Computational Framework for Pattern Detection on Unaligned Sequences: An Application on SARS-CoV-2 Data, Frontiers in Genetics, 2021, https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2021.618170 • Maria Tsagiopoulou, Maria Christina Maniou, Nikolaos Pechlivanis, et. al., UMIc: A Preprocessing Method for UMI Deduplication and Reads Correction, Frontiers in Genetics, 2021, https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2021.660366