Scientists uncover pre-treatment signatures in monocytes, myeloid cells, and T cells that predict corticosteroid resistance in patients with acute GVHD, hinting steroid resistance is an intrinsic property of immune cells. #ScienceTranslationalMedicine https://scim.ag/4t6Y4ar

Corticosteroid resistance is predetermined by early immune response dynamics at acute graft-versus-host disease onset

Steroid-resistant acute graft-versus-host disease is set at disease onset and leads to distinct cell-to-cell cross-talk and immune trajectories.

scim.ag

Huge congrats to Professor @loisher.bsky.social who was awarded the @nhmrc.bsky.social Elizabeth Blackburn Award - recognising the nation’s top-ranked Investigator Grant application - her work securing $2.9M to advance immunotherapy in breast cancer. More: www.petermac.org/about-us/new...

Parkes lab pre-print alert! ‘TMEM33 deletion potentiates anti-tumor CD8⁺ T cell immunity.’ Led by mtjackson101.bsky.social. Full bluetutorial follows! 1/10 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Proud to share our new paper in Science Advances. We show that indoor tanning beds cause widespread mutational damage across the skin to increase melanoma risk, especially in body sites that rarely see sunlight. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #Melanoma #SkinCancer

Molecular effects of indoor tanning

The skin cells of tanning bed users have distinct mutational features as compared to people who only experience natural sunlight.

science.org

There was something different about patients receiving treatment for cancer in the pandemic. Less treatment was given, so it may have been restricted the fittest/ those who would most benefit. This may explain the Covid vaccine enhancement of ICB recently reported. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Deconvolving SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine impact on immunotherapy-related survival in a pandemic

Real-world data suggest that SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines, administered within 100 days of immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) treatment (“peri-ICI vaccination”), may improve ICI effectiveness, potentially ...

medrxiv.org

Brian Huntly and I are looking to recruit a postdoc to investigate a promising novel therapeutic target in B-ALL @scicambridge.bsky.social. This new CRUK-funded project will involve collaboration with Prof Sir Steve Jackson's group @cruk-ci.bsky.social and the CRUK Functional Genomics centre.

The murder rate in London is now the lowest in decades, perhaps centuries. (The Times)

“Critically assessing the literature, we found it beset by conceptual & methodological flaws & limitations, undermining claims that the gut microbiome is causally involved in etiology/pathophysiology of autism” Crucial PSA from @wiringthebrain.bsky.social @statsepi.bsky.social @deevybee.bsky.social🧪

Conceptual and methodological flaws undermine claims of a link between the gut microbiome and autism

Claims that the gut microbiome causally contributes to autism regularly appear in the scientific literature and popular press. Mitchell et al. critically examine influential studies underpinning these...

cell.com

#WIMMReads: New @nature.com study, led by the Simmons & Antanaviciute Groups, used advanced single-cell and spatial analysis techniques to map the cells that drive #Crohn's fistulas - paving the way for targeted treatments 🧪 Learn more 👇 @rdm.ox.ac.uk @medsci.ox.ac.uk @ox.ac.uk

Oxford scientists map the cells that drive Crohn’s disease fistulas

Researchers at the MRC Translational Immune Discovery Unit have identified how rare populations of abnormal cells drive the formation and persistence of fistulas - painful, tunnel-like tracts that dev...

imm.ox.ac.uk

This is a very interesting study that implicates CMV seropositivity with enhanced spike-specific T cell immunity post covid vaccination. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Impact of CMV Infection and Cancer Treatment on Vaccine Efficacy in Oncology Patients

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection leaves lasting effects on the immune system, particularly shaping T-cell populations. In patients with advanced cancer, persistent CMV exposure may influence vaccine re...

medrxiv.org

#WIMMReads: Oxford scientists, led by James Davies at the MRC WIMM, have captured the genome’s structure in unprecedented detail. 🧪 Read the full story below 👇 @ox.ac.uk @davieslab.bsky.social @jojdavies.bsky.social @medsci.ox.ac.uk

Radcliffe Department of Medicine@rdm.ox.ac.uk · 9mo ago

Scientists have the most detailed view yet of how DNA folds and functions inside living cells! The breakthrough helps us understand how genetic differences lead to disease and opens up fresh routes for drug discovery 👇 shorturl.at/nQjsx @jojdavies.bsky.social @imm.ox.ac.uk @medsci.ox.ac.uk

Great to see our review of the immunomodulatory role of cytomegalovirus and the relationship with cancer and immune checkpoint blockade treatment published as an open access article in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

The immunomodulatory role of human cytomegalovirus in cancer in the era of checkpoint immunotherapy | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

This review discusses the role of chronic human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection in patients receiving immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) treatment against different malignancies, with an especial focus on malignant melanoma. We briefly outline the impact ...

royalsocietypublishing.org

www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Comprehensive analysis of microbial content in whole-genome sequencing samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas project

An analysis of TCGA whole-genome sequencing samples yields a comprehensive resource for investigating the role of microbes in cancer.

science.org

CMV co-evolved with human. It is a master regulator of immunity and knows about our biology more than we do.

fairfaxlab @bpfairfax.bsky.social · last yr.

www.nature.com/articles/s41... Proud of my group and collaborators for this work published today in Nature Medicine. We find Cytomegalovirus, which has a profound impact on T cell immunity, is associated with distinct clinical outcomes in patients receiving checkpoint immunotherapy for melanoma.

Super paper from some super talented colleagues… CMV positivity related to better outcomes and lower toxicity with PD1 blockade, and potential protection from MM development. Lots of interesting avenues to follow and very relevant to treatment stratification 👏

fairfaxlab @bpfairfax.bsky.social · last yr.

www.nature.com/articles/s41... Proud of my group and collaborators for this work published today in Nature Medicine. We find Cytomegalovirus, which has a profound impact on T cell immunity, is associated with distinct clinical outcomes in patients receiving checkpoint immunotherapy for melanoma.

Related to lively discussion @brownmedicine.bsky.social this morning about the interplay of environment, genetics and immunotherapy - here CMV seropositivity associated with much lower G3 toxicity of colon, lung, muscle, higher in skin. Very intriguing irAE data from @bpfairfax.bsky.social 🤓

fairfaxlab @bpfairfax.bsky.social · last yr.

Separately, in exact opposite to what we'd anticipated- we find patients with CMV have much lower overall Grade 3+ toxicity from treatment. This is not across all toxicities, but most associated with much lower rates of colitis and pneumonitis. They conversely have increased skin toxicity.

#WIMMReads Fairfax Group ( @bpfairfax.bsky.social ) map how genetic variation shapes monocyte gene expression and splicing across immune contexts 🧪 Read more 👇 doi.org/10.1038/s414... #Genomics #Immunology #Transcriptomics

Genetic determinants of monocyte splicing are enriched for disease susceptibility loci - Nature Communications

Our understanding of variation in monocyte context-specific splicing and transcript usage is limited. Here, the authors find genetic variants that affect gene splicing in monocytes in specific co...

doi.org

Why are more younger adults having strokes? Come along to our next free public talk on Tues 4 Nov 6pm to hear researcher Linxin Li discuss what is driving the recent increase and how we tackle it oxfordbrc.nihr.ac.uk/brc-event/fr... @ouhospitals.bsky.social @medsci.ox.ac.uk @ndcnoxford.bsky.social

FREE Public Talk – Why are more younger people having strokes? | NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre

oxfordbrc.nihr.ac.uk

New CRUK Post-doc position in our group. #mutationalorder #multiomics #cancer. my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Interesting paper from Becki Lee and colleagues: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Splenic granulopoiesis and S100A9 drive resistance to checkpoint inhibitors conferred by liver metastases

Here, we investigate why liver metastases reduce the efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors (CPI). The poor prognosis of patients with liver metastases is associated with a systemic increase in neut...

biorxiv.org

New findings in @natcomms.nature.com demonstrate the impact of allelic variation on monocyte context-specific splicing. @bpfairfax.bsky.social & colleagues show that many risk polymorphisms lead to differential gene splicing. ➡️Reveals putative mechanisms of diverse disease risk alleles inc. cancer

Genetic determinants of monocyte splicing are enriched for disease susceptibility loci - Nature Communications

Our understanding of variation in monocyte context-specific splicing and transcript usage is limited. Here, the authors find genetic variants that affect gene splicing in monocytes in specific contexts, including several diseases, and in response to stimulants.

nature.com

PIWI clade Argonautes are essential for transposon silencing. Without them, animals are sterile due to massive transposon activity. But how does piRNA-guided target interaction translate into silencing? PhD student Júlia Portell Montserrat has an intriguing answer www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

📣First paper from the lab is out in @science.org‬! 📣https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adu3461 It’s well known that HLA shapes the TCR repertoire — but how does this change under immune checkpoint blockade (ICB)?

Defining the genetic determinants of CD8+ T cell receptor repertoire in the context of immune checkpoint blockade

Immune checkpoint blockade influences the genetically determined relationship between TCR repertoire and HLA alleles in cancer.

science.org

Our paper describing the Range Extender element which is required and sufficient for long-range enhancer activation at the Shh locus is now available at @nature.com. Congrats to @gracebower.bsky.social who led the study. Below is a brief summary of the main findings www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/

Range extender mediates long-distance enhancer activity - Nature

The REX element is associated with long-range enhancer–promoter interactions.

nature.com

It's hard to avoid recalling this passage from the English historian Tony Judt:

Nick Kapur@nickkapur.bsky.social · last yr.

Most incredible about this is that IU-Bloomington has long been the no. 1 university in the world for teaching Asian languages and cultures, with many programs found nowhere else. They're slashing many of IU-B's most distinctive programs with zero thought or debate. They probably don't even know.

"The diminution and marginalization of science are thus central parts of the erosion of democracy itself." www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Will we habituate to the decline of democracy?

The recent attack on science in the US is not only undermining knowledge; it is also undermining democracy. In a healthy democracy, public policy is guided by evidence, and truth is the shared foundat...

science.org

amazing q&a with paul krugman

No evidence for neutralizing IL1RN autoantibodies in our cohorts of MIS-C, SARS-CoV2 pneumonia or vaccine-induced myocarditis. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Great work by Anish Behere in Nils Landegren lab, Uppsala university

Evaluating IL1RA‐Autoantibodies Across SARS‐CoV‐2‐Related Diseases

Click on the article title to read more.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Black people who are diagnosed with melanoma are about five times as likely as White people to die within five years. Find out how and where to look for the disease.

Too often, Black patients get late diagnoses of deadly skin cancer

For Black people, surviving skin cancer begins with knowing what to look for — and where to look.

washingtonpost.com

Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872 h\t @gmeric.bsky.social