Adam Pavlinek
@adampavlinek.bsky.social
Neuroscientist, postdoctoral researcher, currently based at NIMH Alumni of @ncndgroup.bsky.social Interested in all things brain organoids and sex differences 🧠. Views are my own. he/him 🏳️🌈
Brain organoids exhibit molecular signatures of their developmental age, according to a paper in Nature. The organoids — observed over five years — successfully matured and developed traits resembling those of postnatal brains. go.nature.com/46b6ELi 🧪
Doing a linear stretch on these images shows how dramatic the "edits" were, revealing the deception in clear terms. This should be a complete scandal for Thermo Fisher and more people in the biosciences should be talking about it.
Reese Richardson@reeserichardson.bsky.social · 4mo agoThe Thermo Fisher situation keeps getting worse. We've now collected 450+ problematic images presented as verification data in TF's antibody catalog. This includes: 🖌️ Dozens more images with duplications or painting 🖨️ Hundreds of blots that all share the same background (behold slideshow below)
A biotech company that doesn’t know how science and scientific integrity works. Thermo Fisher can be nonchalant because they’re a giant monopoly and people keep buying from them. After this I wouldn’t trust any antibody from them.
Reese Richardson@reeserichardson.bsky.social · 4mo agoThermo Fisher now has a page up in response to our observations. They flatly deny that images were manipulated or fabricated while repeating that images were "optimized for presentation and clarity on the website", no lie, six times. www.thermofisher.com/us/en/home/l...
The Thermo Fisher situation keeps getting worse. We've now collected 450+ problematic images presented as verification data in TF's antibody catalog. This includes: 🖌️ Dozens more images with duplications or painting 🖨️ Hundreds of blots that all share the same background (behold slideshow below)
TL;DR: We've identified more than 100 cases of apparent manipulation in Thermo Fisher Scientific's antibody verification data. @sholtodavid.bsky.social @johanduchene.bsky.social reeserichardson.blog/2026/05/28/h...
How much of Thermo Fisher’s antibody data has been manipulated?
We’ve documented more than 100 instances of apparent data manipulation in Thermo’s catalog
reeserichardson.blog
Surprised to discover that Thermo Fisher appears to show a fake western blot for the validation of one of their p53 antibodies. I've added a diagram to show the very similar bands. This does not appear to be one of the "published figures" but their own internal data.
Lab-grown organoids are turbo-charging the study of human brain development and disease go.nature.com/48lR8xD
Mini models of the human brain are revealing how this complex organ takes shape
Lab-grown organoids are turbo-charging the study of human brain development and disease.
go.nature.com
Electrophysiological development and functional plasticity in dissociated human cerebral organoids across multiple cell lines
Electrophysiological development and functional plasticity in dissociated human cerebral organoids across multiple cell lines
Microelectrode array (MEA) recordings of human neural organoids allow for functional studies of brain network development, but these studies are currently limited in throughput. Pavlinek et al. use organoid dissociation to longitudinally study the development of neural networks and the effects of drug treatment, cell line, and cell-type composition.
dlvr.it
Brain #organoids have huge potential for 💊 testing drugs, 🧬 researching genetics and 🧠 studying brain development. New research from @ncndgroup.bsky.social @adampavlinek.bsky.social scales up experiments and reduces variability. 🔗 www.kcl.ac.uk/news/a-long-...
A long-term and scalable system to record from neural organoids | King's College London
A new brain organoid system helps reduce unwanted variability and scales up experiments for higher throughput drug testing and genetic research.
kcl.ac.uk
Excited to share my latest 1st author paper: Electrophysiological development and functional plasticity in dissociated human cerebral organoids across multiple cell lines, published in Cell Reports Methods. Read it here: www.cell.com/cell-reports... See also the thread I did on the preprint below!
Electrophysiological development and functional plasticity in dissociated human cerebral organoids across multiple cell lines
Microelectrode array (MEA) recordings of human neural organoids allow for functional studies of brain network development, but these studies are currently limited in throughput. Pavlinek et al. use or...
cell.com
Adam Pavlinek@adampavlinek.bsky.social · 2y ago🧪 Check out my thread on our latest brain organoid preprint! Includes some videos of MEA activity! 🎥
Good lesson here. #Organoids and organotypic microtissues are fabulous for particular questions, but probably will always need complementary modelling and human studies. A good modeller knows the limitations and works within those.
Vinny Costa@vincentcostaphd.bsky.social · 7mo ago“Interrogation of data from cerebral organoids demonstrated that, although broad elements of in vivo development are recapitulated in vitro, many layer-specific transcriptomic programs in neuronal maturation are absent.” Got questions about the brain dynamics, organoids are a dead end. Full stop.
PXD069807 🚨 Discovery of human brain organoids under spaceflight and ground conditions. 🚨 New dataset alert! 🚨
NIH leadership wants to strip worker's rights from the majority of scientists on its campuses. But, the NIH does not get to say whether we are a union or not. We do, and we are no strangers to having to fight for our union. Time for a short history lesson. 1/n Disclaimer: all views are my own.
NIH Says It Will No Longer Recognize the Research Fellows’ Union
NIH leadership said the union “should never have been certified,” in an email to the union’s leadership.
notus.org
A set of 12 papers published in Nature journals offers new atlases of brain development and hints at the varied evolutionary origins of different cell types. By Holly Barker #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/con...
Constellation of studies charts brain development, offers ‘dramatic revision’
The atlases could pinpoint pathways that determine the fate of cells linked to neurodevelopmental conditions.
thetransmitter.org
The @crick.ac.uk is recruiting Early Career Group Leaders - Lab set-up, research costs, salaries for up to 5 researchers - Support for up to 12 years - Access to our core facilities - Competitive salary - Fantastic colleagues - All areas of biology Deadline 27 Nov www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud...
Early career group leaders
We appoint researchers from across biology and biomedicine to set up their first groups at the Crick.
crick.ac.uk
A very well-written perspective on our understanding of Autism for a lay audience 👇
New York Times Opinion@nytopinion.nytimes.com · last yr.The Trump administration’s autism project “is built on the premise that an autism diagnosis is a terrible tragedy and that scientists and doctors have failed,” writes Roy Grinker. “But science has not failed.”
Sensationalist claims by certain organoid researchers about the degree of similarity or complexity of neural organoids to the in vivo human brain can lead to profound misunderstandings about the capabilities of organoids by researchers and the lay public, this opinion piece being a prime example.
Facing the possibility of consciousness in human brain organoids
The authors challenge recent claims that the emergence of consciousness in human brain organoids (HBOs) remains implausible in the near term. Drawing on neuroscientific evidence, developmental paralle...
cell.com
⭐ Are you a visionary researcher with an interest in Parkinson’s?⭐ We are recruiting for 4️⃣ outstanding Group Leaders to join our new Parkinson’s Research Centre in partnership with @parkinsons.org.uk 🙌 Apply here by 22 September👉 buff.ly/2aPdAu2
AlphaGenome deepmind.google/discover/blo... 🧬🖥️🧪 API: github.com/google-deepm... Docs: www.alphagenomedocs.com Community: www.alphagenomecommunity.com
ICYMI: Sex-related factors are important in two ways, writes Marija Kundakovic @kundakoviclab.bsky.social. They are more precise variables than sex, and they are gender-independent. Part of our series on sex differences in the brain. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/sex-differen...
Revisiting sex and gender in the brain
To conduct scientifically accurate and socially responsible research, think of “sex” as a complex, multifactorial and context-dependent variable.
thetransmitter.org
President Trump has slashed funding for medical research, threatening a longstanding alliance between the federal government and universities that helped make the U.S. the world leader in medical science. Here are the nearly 2,500 grants that have been canceled or delayed. https://trib.al/iBstU2B
With organoids, assembloids and a growing toolkit of bioengineering tricks, scientists are stitching together models of the developing human brain — and pushing the limits of realism and control https://go.nature.com/44BRRtC
Brain tissues, assemble! Inside the push to build better brain models
Nature - With organoids, assembloids and a growing toolkit of bioengineering tricks, scientists are stitching together models of the developing human brain — and pushing the limits of realism and...
go.nature.com
Astrocyte cues boost neuron maturity in forebrain organoids, thanks to protein and nutrient-rich medium. From 2D to 3D cultures, neurons mature faster! PMID:40122897, Nat Commun 2025, @NatureComms https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58295-3 #Medsky #Pharmsky #RNA #ASHG #ESHG 🧪
Astrocyte-secreted cues promote neural maturation and augment activity in human forebrain organoids | Nature Communications
Brain organoids have been proposed as suitable human brain model candidates for a variety of applications. However, the lack of appropriate maturation limits the transferability of such functional tools. Here, we present a method to facilitate neuronal maturation by integrating astrocyte-secreted factors into hPSC-derived 2D and 3D neural culture systems. We demonstrate that protein- and nutrient-enriched astrocyte-conditioned medium (ACM) accelerates neuronal differentiation with enlarged neuronal layer and the overproduction of deep-layer cortical neurons. We captured the elevated changes in the functional activity of neuronal networks within ACM-treated organoids using comprehensive electrophysiological recordings. Furthermore, astrocyte-secreted cues can induce lipid droplet accumulation in neural cultures, offering protective effects in neural differentiation to withstand cellular stress. Together, these data indicate the potential of astrocyte secretions to promote neural maturat
doi.org
This looks interesting, but no guarantee the information will be accurate - they say “almost” no hallucinations, I wonder what the error rate is compared to standard chatGPT. Also only trained on Springer Nature papers and protocols so missing out on a lot of information.
Nature Protocols@natprot.nature.com · 2y agoMethods Muse from Springer Nature aims to offer prompt-based protocol generation and troubleshooting to save valuable time, effort, and material costs. It has been launched as "open beta". Do you want to give it a go? communities.springernature.com/posts/method...
🧪 Check out my thread on our latest brain organoid preprint! Includes some videos of MEA activity! 🎥
Adam Pavlinek@adampavlinek.bsky.social · 2y agoExcited to share our newest preprint, Electrophysiological development and functional plasticity in dissociated human cerebral #organoids across multiple cell lines 🧠🔬🧪: doi.org/10.1101/2025... This is based on some of the work I did in my PhD with the great @ncndgroup.bsky.social 1/5
Excited to share our newest preprint, Electrophysiological development and functional plasticity in dissociated human cerebral #organoids across multiple cell lines 🧠🔬🧪: doi.org/10.1101/2025... This is based on some of the work I did in my PhD with the great @ncndgroup.bsky.social 1/5
Excited to share our latest preprint, presenting a multi-omic human neural organoid cell atlas of the posterior brain! 🧠🔬 doi.org/10.1101/2025... Great work with @hsiuchuanlin.bsky.social @zhisonghe.bsky.social @graycamplab.bsky.social and Barbara Treutlein!
Contributing editor Josh Sanes explains why, if he were starting his neuroscience career today, he’d focus on human neurobiology. www.thetransmitter.org/human-neurot...
Neuroscientists have more direct access to brain than ever
Model systems continue to offer us tremendous insight, but it’s time for basic researchers to train their sights on the human brain.
thetransmitter.org
