🚨Hot off the Presses!🚨 New work from our NIH team! We asked a simple question: can we systematically find cell-surface targets in #HCC for #theranostics development? Our answer: yes! A thread on the pipeline, the hits, and the caveats 🧵 1/10
Freddy E Escorcia, MD/PhD
@freddyeescorcia.bsky.social
Radiation Oncologist, Scientist · Cancer imaging and therapy · Radiopharmaceuticals development ☢️ · Personal account https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0727-3242 #RadOnc #nucmed #Radiopharmaceuticals #LiverCancer #HCC #chemsky #medsky #oncsky
As Dr. Fleming famously wrote about that red-letter date: "When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn't plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world's first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I guess that was exactly what I did." /1
Prasad Jallepalli, MD, PhD@prasad.bsky.social · 2w agowww.pbs.org/newshour/hea... this is a great piece, not least because it shows you how massive breakthroughs often come down to a handful of contingencies, intuitions, and ridiculous tolerance for failure at just the right point in time
🚨New work on #radiopharmaceuticals #immunology from our collaboration w @hhrosanguyen.bsky.social and Ravi Patel UPMC Rad Onc The interplay bt #radiopharmaceuticals therapy and the immune compartment is a hot topic ☢️! Work led by postdoc Constanza Rodriguez sheds some light! 1/2
I am still waiting on whether a 3% scored R01 will be funded at the NIA (reviewed in Jan) and even the NoA for my funded R01 non-competitive renewal is a month late 😭. And this is preclinical science that shouldn’t have any “dirty” words!
Max Kozlov@maxkozlov.bsky.social · last mo.NIH grants have been under political scrutiny since early 2025. But what does the screening process actually look like? What is being flagged? I spent a month digging into leaked docs and emails. We've published the 235-word list that are being flagged by an internal AI tool. And so much more. 🧵
🔥 Published today, and just in time for summer conferences, here are your guidelines for presenting badly www.nature.com/articles/s41... rdcu.be/fqa92
New work out of the NCI @cp-cellrepmed.bsky.social Use of VLA4-targeting radiopharmaceutical therapy to reprogram the TME in neuroblastoma and enhance CAR efficacy! @freddyeescorcia.bsky.social @rpatelMDPhD www.cell.com/cell-reports...
A radiopharmaceutical enhances CAR T cells against radio-sensitive and radio-resistant neuroblastoma by tumor sensitization and TME remodeling
Rodriguez et al. demonstrate that VLA-4-targeted low-dose radiopharmaceutical therapy enhances CAR T cell activity and drives tumor regression in neuroblastoma mouse models. Mechanistically, RPT promo...
cell.com
Tagging @hhrosanguyen.bsky.social
Freddy E Escorcia, MD/PhD@freddyeescorcia.bsky.social · 2mo ago🚨New pub alert!🚨 Excited to share our @MolTherapy pub resulting from a massive collaboration w friends and colleagues Rosa Nguyen & @RPatelMDPHD & their teams! We explore GPC2-targeted #radiopharmaceuticals #theranostics CAR T cell therapy in models of #neuroblastoma! 👇🧵 1/9
🚨New pub alert!🚨 Excited to share our @MolTherapy pub resulting from a massive collaboration w friends and colleagues Rosa Nguyen & @RPatelMDPHD & their teams! We explore GPC2-targeted #radiopharmaceuticals #theranostics CAR T cell therapy in models of #neuroblastoma! 👇🧵 1/9
Excited to share our latest work out of the POB/NCI! We are exploring the use of radiopharmaceuticals to detect cancer antigens and guide combination therapies with CAR T cells. @freddyeescorcia.bsky.social #CancerResearch #CAR_T #Radiopharmeceuticals #B+_Foundation www.cell.com/molecular-th...
Development of novel GPC2-directed radiotheranostics and CAR T cell therapy for neuroblastoma
Phadke and colleagues developed a radiotheranostic platform with 89Zr-mCT3 for non-invasive GPC2 imaging via immunoPET and 225Ac-mCT3 for targeted alpha-particle therapy. 89Zr-mCT3 served as a novel r...
cell.com
Science peeps, particularly trainees: When reviewing grants, it really, really helps if you have a Google Scholar page, an ORCID account, or a website that makes getting information about you, easy. Some sort of web presence. I'm begging you. Make it easier for study sections to give you money.
I have always found that my lab staff each contribute unique strengths. There is even greater reason to think this holds true at the level of a lab contributing to the science endeavor.
If you were to count out a million seconds, it would take you 11 and a half days. A billion seconds would take you 31.7 years. But a trillion seconds would take 31,700 years — to reach that point today, you would have needed to start counting around the time that neanderthals went extinct.
A trillion dollars is a stupid amount of money
No one man should have all that power.
theverge.com
1. How common is LLM use in scientific publishing, and how does it vary across field, publisher, journal prestige, author demographics etc.? @kylesiler.bsky.social has new paper in PNAS that addresses this question on a massive scale: 7.3 million papers from Elsevier, PLOS, MDPI, and Frontiers.
The diffusion of large language models in published academic articles | PNAS
Large language models (LLMs) are rapidly changing academic research, raising questions of who is adopting these tools and under what conditions. Th...
pnas.org
When it rains it pours. The RasgonLab was just awarded 2 NIH grants (R01 and R21). This is also actually the first time in my career that I've successfully renewed an R01
a man in a suit and tie is standing in a desert with the word boom written on the ground
ALT: a man in a suit and tie is standing in a desert with the word boom written on the ground
media.tenor.com
If we try to play this game, we will lose. Our biggest mistake is thinking we can tell who the winners are (or which research questions will be most important in the future).
Kris Willis@kawillis.bsky.social · 3mo ago“The U.S. now faces “a two-nation race for leadership,” according to the National Science Board (NSB), … [that will] … require U.S. policymakers to make difficult choices about which fields are most worthy of support.”
💔 I’m so tired of this we all depend on caregivers to pretend otherwise is to reject our own humanity
Helen Branswell 🇨🇦@helenbranswell.bsky.social · 3mo ago2. Four health workers are among the dead; health workers are always at elevated risk in #Ebola outbreaks. 2 cases unlinked to each other have been confirmed in Kampala, the Uganda capital. And a confirmed case has been reported in the DRC capital, Kinshasa. None of this is good.
My quote of the day I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it. Frank A. Clark
I don’t know how to feel about grant rejections anymore. When you get a score that would have been funded at any other point in history, except right now, how bad can you feel? I see scores from friends and colleagues (and my own) and it just breaks my heart more than anything.
🚨New pub just dropped🚨 This effort was led by former postbac Divya Nambiar, and scientist Thomas Esparza, and brought to the finishline by Orit Jacobson at the NIH! We identified an #HCC-selective target CD147/BSG, and engineered a novel nanobody-based immunoPET agent. 1/5
The @nationalacademies.org Awards for Excellence in #scicomm have honored some of the best thinkers & creatives I know, like @chanda.blacksky.app @neillewisjr.bsky.social @cbo.bsky.social Top award: $40,000. Deadline: April 3. Explore & apply www.nationalacademies.org/programs/NAE...
National Academies Eric and Wendy Schmidt Awards for Excellence in Science Communications
The National Academies are accepting submissions to an annual award program that aims to recognize and develop excellence in science communication by research scientists, science journalists, and scie...
nationalacademies.org
Each Friday night, I write a briefing on what happened in US science & higher ed. 🧪 Mar 20 (Year 2, Week 12) - major ruling! ACIP & vaccine schedule illegitimate - NIH funds finally(?) “flowing” & what that actually means - NSF still hostage to OMB & so much more buttondown.com/liminalcreat...
Year 2, Week 12
Mar 14-20, 2026 - equinox
buttondown.com
New @sloanfoundation.bsky.social grants: Exemplary Pathways to STEM Graduate Education. Up to $500,000 for orgs focused on helping remove obstacles for undergraduates who want to pursue advanced STEM degrees. Deadline is June 1. Please share & apply if this is you! sloan.org/programs/hig...
Call for Letters of Inquiry: Exemplary Pathways to STEM Graduate Education | Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Our mission is to make the world a better place through the advancement of scientific knowledge.
sloan.org
Whoa!🤯
Nature Astronomy@natastron.nature.com · 5mo agoSamples returned from the asteroid Ryugu contain all five canonical nucleobases (A, G, C, T, U). Their presence in Ryugu and Bennu supports the hypothesis that carbonaceous asteroids contributed to the prebiotic chemical inventory of early Earth. http://dlvr.it/TRWtVp ☄️
This is kinda bonkers. In addition, 20 amino acids were found on Ryugu, along with uracil and vitamin B3. These have been found in other instances, but since the samples from Ryugu were collected directly from the asteroid and delivered in sealed capsules, contamination on Earth could be ruled out.
Nature Astronomy@natastron.nature.com · 5mo agoSamples returned from the asteroid Ryugu contain all five canonical nucleobases (A, G, C, T, U). Their presence in Ryugu and Bennu supports the hypothesis that carbonaceous asteroids contributed to the prebiotic chemical inventory of early Earth. http://dlvr.it/TRWtVp ☄️
I don't think most people would say "it was fine before." Getting a sub 10%ile grant is really hard. But having 5th %iles go unfunded just feels bewildering. It's not that they are objectively better than the 10%iles, but getting 5 requires enormous luck and even that is now not good enough.
Drug Monkey@drugmonkey.bsky.social · 5mo agoMaybe that’s why they are so convinced that everything is just now totally broken. But it was fine before.
NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26) Directorates to follow 1/10
1. Kevin Gross and I have a new paper out today PLOS Biology. We used economic models based around screening games and the market for unpaid labor to highlight a meltdown cycle threatening peer review.
Screening, sorting, and the feedback cycles that imperil peer review
The process of peer review is vital to contemporary science, but is also under enormous strain. This study uses mathematical models to dissect the threats to the long-term viability of peer review, su...
journals.plos.org