I am thrilled to say that I have accepted a position as Assistant Prof at @stanforduniversity.bsky.social CV Medicine and am launching the Weldy Lab at Stanford! My work integrates genetics, epigenetics, RNA biology, and cardiovascular disease. Check it out: weldylab.org Recruiting!

NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26) Directorates to follow 1/10

Great to see our review on ADAR1 and dsRNA sensing out in ATVB @ahascience.bsky.social today! Our understanding of the ADAR1-dsRNA-MDA5 axis in complex and rare disease is changing rapidly with important implications for therapy --> worth a read. #RNAsky www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/...

NIH reports on ESI support in FY2025 drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/02/22/n...

NIH reports on ESI support in FY2025

I will be honest, I am somewhat amazed we are getting any funding data for FY2025 out of NIH. The databook has not yet been updated, so we’re not out of the woods yet. Still, there’s a …

drugmonkey.wordpress.com

Check this out straight from the NIH website, acknowledging that multiyear funding was likely responsible for a 20% decrease in early stage investigators. And that it was expected. A strange approach for someone so committed to the next generation of scientists. grants.nih.gov/news-events/...

Thrilled that @stanfordmedicine.bsky.social Comms highlighted our work on epistasis in their Insights channel! 🧬💛🌟 Grateful to work with an incredible team: my postdoc advisor @euanashley.bsky.social, co-corresponding author Bin Yu, and co–first author Tiffany Tang. med.stanford.edu/news/insight...

A relatively random thread about the degrees of NIH Directors. Not surprisingly, almost all NIH Directors have been straight MD holders. However, there have been two MD-PhD holders (actually one PhD, MD and one MD, PhD, but no combined MD-PhD holders) 1/13

Super excited we made the cover of @natcardiovascres.nature.com! Work represents ADAR1 RNA editing within the vascular wall

Chad Weldy, MD, PhD@chadweldy.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Hard to understate how wonderful it is to see our manuscript in print today @natcardiovascres.nature.com. We discover ADAR1 to control dsRNA sensor MDA5 in atherosclerosis, creating a new paradigm of endogenous dsRNA sensing as a causal mechanism of disease. Let's get into it 👇 #RNAsky rdcu.be/eGEyu

Excited for a major milestone in our efforts to map enhancers and interpret variants in the human genome: The E2G Portal! e2g.stanford.edu This collates our predictions of enhancer-gene regulatory interactions across >1,600 cell types and tissues. Uses cases 👇 1/

Hard to understate how wonderful it is to see our manuscript in print today @natcardiovascres.nature.com. We discover ADAR1 to control dsRNA sensor MDA5 in atherosclerosis, creating a new paradigm of endogenous dsRNA sensing as a causal mechanism of disease. Let's get into it 👇 #RNAsky rdcu.be/eGEyu

Smooth muscle expression of RNA editing enzyme ADAR1 controls activation of the RNA sensor MDA5 in atherosclerosis

Nature Cardiovascular Research - Weldy et al. show that smooth muscle expression of the RNA editing enzyme ADAR1 regulates activation of the double-stranded RNA sensor MDA5 in a novel mechanism of...

rdcu.be

I am tremendously excited to share our work revealing the epigenomic landscape of single vascular cells. We discover that enhancers are not only cell type but vascular site specific and regulate the genetic drivers of disease risk. Let's dive in! 🧬👇 #epigenetics www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

Epigenomic landscape of single vascular cells reflects developmental origin and disease risk loci | Molecular Systems Biology

imageimageVascular sites have distinct susceptibility to disease. Here, through single cell epigenomic profiling and predictive machine learning modeling, this study revealed that regulatory enhancers are vascular site specific, providing insight ...

embopress.org

www.cbsnews.com/video/saving.... This video shows the real and devastating impact of the cuts to the NIH funding. My heart aches from hearing the story of Natalie Phelps who has stage 4 colorectal cancer and how she and her family are being impacted.

Saving money vs. saving lives

Scientists conducting medical research are facing an existential crisis: Layoffs and budget cuts pushed by President Trump that, they say, jeopardize finding a cure for cancer. They tell "Sunday Morni...

cbsnews.com

Senate committee endorses NIH budget increase, rebuking Trump administration’s proposed 40% cut www.statnews.com/2025/07/31/n...

Senate committee endorses NIH budget increase, rebuking Trump administration’s proposed 40% cut

Senators from both parties endorsed a $400 million increase to the budget of the National Institutes of Health on Thursday

statnews.com

This is the stupidity of it all—carve outs for AK make no sense for the people of Alaska when the UW/Harborview/Seattle Children’s system is the referral destination for anything too complicated for Anchorage

Senator Patty Murray@murray.senate.gov · last yr.

Today I held a press call to make clear GOP health care cuts hitting hospitals in WA state will also hurt people in WY, AK, MT, & ID. Because hospitals in our state provide essential, high-level specialty care to people across the entire Mountain West.

National Science Foundation staff were notified that their office space will be taken over by Department of Housing and Urban Development. It's unclear where the 1,800+ NSF employees will work. Renovation plans apparently include a personal gym for the HUD secretary & family eos.org/research-and...

National Science Foundation Staff Booted From Headquarters - Eos

Staff at the National Science Foundation (NSF) were notified on 25 June that the agency’s office space, located in Alexandria, Va., will be taken over by Department of Housing and Urban Development (H...

eos.org

Atul Butte died yesterday. The world lost a giant. A big bear of a man. With a huge smile. With love for everyone. With energy that could power a room. I loved everything about Atul. I loved how he was always happy. I loved how excited he was about science and helping people.

If you weren't angry enough already, here are the rates of non-competitive renewals through May. 4008 Non-competitive renewals were due to be funded in May. The total funded was 99! Some is due to terminations, but most is due to slow grant making due to DOGE review and other impediments. 1/2

The NIH represents incredible value for the US economy and for the people of the world. We need to safeguard its future and that of our students and trainees. @rachelkeranen.bsky.social and I share our thoughts in today’s LA Times. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Contributor: Slashing NIH research guarantees a less healthy, less wealthy America

The administration's cuts at the National Institutes of Health will obliterate billions in economic gains, America's scientific predominance and untold human lives.

latimes.com

Senator Durbin noted that some (I believe Republican Senators) had indicated the US had been doing more than its share of biomedical research and it was time for other countries take a turn. I felt I had to interrupt to respond...

Delighted to share our latest work deciphering the landscape of chromatin accessibility and modeling the DNA sequence syntax rules underlying gene regulation during human fetal development! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Read on for more: 🧵 1/16 #GeneReg 🧬🖥️

Dissecting regulatory syntax in human development with scalable multiomics and deep learning

Transcription factors (TFs) establish cell identity during development by binding regulatory DNA in a sequence-specific manner, often promoting local chromatin accessibility, and regulating gene expre...

biorxiv.org

Even as someone who has followed everything going on at the NIH very closely, this story made my heart sink. I hope Americans watch this and see the impact of shutting down science. This effects everyone.

60 Minutes@60minutes.bsky.social · last yr.

“This doesn't feel like a strategic plan to reorganize and make the NIH better and more efficient. It feels like a wrecking ball,” says an NIH insider, who asked 60 Minutes to protect his identity due to his concern about reprisal. https://cbsn.ws/3EKcER9

Tons of fun at our annual #MyHeartCounts 5K! Amazing event and the one time a year I remember that racing a 5K is….hard, lol. Hit my goal time and looking forward to next year! @stanfordmedicine.bsky.social

Please join us next Tuesday April 29th at 1 pm EST for our next Symposium on Precision Genomics: CRISPR and Single-Cell Technologies in Vascular Biology, featuring #AaronJames @bgcoonlab.bsky.social @chadweldy.bsky.social and moderated by @vsleekim.bsky.social ! Register here: tinyurl.com/yhcdr68a

Here is the formal announcement. Jay Bhattacharya and RFK Jr. need to explain. Who exactly are they trying to "make healthy?" www.whi.org/md/news/whi-...

4/20/2025

whi.org

Shoa Clarke@shoaclarke.bsky.social · last yr.

The Women's Health Initiative is one of the most impactful studies in US history. It's been ongoing since the '90s, continually providing new insights, and NIH is cutting funding. Regional Centers are being closed. The Clinical Coordinating Center is now in limbo. For what? Utterly asinine... 🤬

Happy to be part of this NAVBO Symposium on precision genomics (Tues, April 29, 2025). Excited to present on the epigenomic landscape of single vascular cells-ranging from single cell, regulatory networks, and ML prediction of variant effect, so much to talk about! members.navbo.org/calendar-of-...

Symposium: Precision Genomics: CRISPR and Single-Cell Technologies in Vascular Biology

NAVBO Symposium: Precision Genomics: CRISPR and Single-Cell Technologies in Vascular Biology  Speakers:  “Integrated transcriptomics of human blood vessels”Aaron James, Johns Hopkins University School...

members.navbo.org

Sigh. This study claiming a lack of association between ApoB & plaque has blown up in the media with the typical podcaster/youtuber grifters jumping on it. Beyond the obvious (small N, non-randomized), here are a few reasons the study doesn't show what people claim 🧵: www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/...

Plaque Begets Plaque, ApoB Does Not: Longitudinal Data From the KETO-CTA Trial

jacc.org

Thrilled to share the🥇paper from the lab @ahajournals.bsky.social. Here we continue to unravel the mysteries of the 9p21.3 CAD locus showing it drives VSMC transition into an osteochondrogenic state, promoting calcification. @clintomics.bsky.social @UWMadison CRB. www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/...

9p21.3 Coronary Artery Disease Risk Locus Drives Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells to an Osteochondrogenic State | Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology

BACKGROUND: Genome-wide association studies have identified common genetic variants at ≈300 human genomic loci linked to coronary artery disease susceptibility. Among these genomic regions, the most i...

ahajournals.org

From an operational security perspective, this is the highest level of fuckup imaginable. These people cannot keep America safe.

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans

U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.

theatlantic.com

There are days in life that shake you. I’m shattered 💔 to share that I just found out that the US Government terminated my 2024 NIH Director’s Early Independence Award (~$2 million), threatening my long-promised assistant professor job at Columbia University & academic career... 1/🧵

Yeah nice work @shoaclarke.bsky.social and team! Great to see this out in print!

Shoa Clarke@shoaclarke.bsky.social · last yr.

Most hearts have right dominant coronary anatomy but some have left. Why? Is it random? When/how is dominance established? Now out in @cellpress.bsky.social, the 1st GWAS of coronary dominance + experiments implicating CXCL12 as a driver of human coronary patterning! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...