At the iwNHL 2014, Prof Francesco D’Amore (Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark) interviews Dr Elaine Jaffe (National Cancer Institute, Maryland, USA) and Prof Laurence de Leval (IUP Institut universitaire de pathologie, Lausanne, Switzerland) about their involvement at this workshop. Dr Jaffe describes the important abnormal contribution of B-cell proliferation in angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma and other T-cell lymphomas of follicular T-helper cell derivation. As a result, a neoplastic precursor cell is speculated. Prof de Leval describes recent sequencing discoveries in peripheral T-cell lymphomas that have provided new insight in tumour understanding.