Ray Kennedy
@raykennedy.bsky.social
Interested in politics, economics, global health and science. Senior Program Officer at Coefficient Giving but on here in a private capacity only.
New short blogpost! I wrote a round up of cancer research news from ASCO2026: - Daraxonrasib, the breakthrough pancreatic cancer drug - Big 7-year results of lorlatinib for ALK+ lung cancers – Talazoparib, a prostate cancer drug that cut the risk of progression by half and much more. Read here:
Cancer breakthroughs at ASCO
A What we're reading spotlight
abundanceandgrowth.org
Labour shedding votes to the Greens so the advice is to scrap net zero and be friendly with Trump? Baffling to me how someone who won 3 elections can come up with this stuff...
aveekbhattacharya.substack.com/p/i-asked-my... Really enjoyed this. My guess is that Burnham's popularity will only last if he does a good job as prime minister.
I asked my friends working in politics who would be best at being Prime Minister
In which I play recruiter and take some references
aveekbhattacharya.substack.com
Really enjoyed playing Blood on the Clocktower recently. A big upgrade on mafia/werewolf type games, in particular love that dead players still have a big role to play. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_o...
Blood on the Clocktower - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Write for us! We’re looking for people to write many more pieces for us at Works in Progress – including on the story behind superglue, why there’s no syphilis vaccine, how gas turbines became efficient, and many more in this post. If you or someone you know would be interested, please pitch us :)
More articles we would like to commission
Write for Works in Progress.
worksinprogress.news
Clinical trials today are highly bureaucratic, expensive, and time-consuming. Most trials fail to recruit enough participants to answer their questions at all. This great post by Adam Kroetsch explains how things got this way. www.clinicaltrialsabundance.blog/p/clinical-t...
🚨🚨🚨 Funding call - Generic Repurposing🚨🚨🚨 Coefficient Giving is seeking expressions of interest to fund clinical trials of repurposed generic drugs for high-burden, neglected diseases. Please see coefficientgiving.org/funds/scienc... for more details!
Request for Proposals: Generic Drug Repurposing
coefficientgiving.org
Mad to me that the UK govt has spent £200m on a covid Inquiry but gave CEPI £160m for the next 5 years. www.gov.uk/government/n... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
UK pledges £160 million to boost global vaccine development
New funding for the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) will speed up vaccine development.
gov.uk
labourlist.org/2026/02/keir... I think the unity ticket would be Rayner as PM with Ed Miliband as Chancellor?
Redirect Notice
google.com
🚨New report with @homesfornorth calls on the government to adopt a novel approach to affordable housing investment: Giving Homes England a ‘National Affordable Housing Bank’ role to invest alongside the private sector in funds set up to deliver discounted rent homes. A 🧵on why this is needed:
Oof felt good to remember reading some of these classics. Night Watch deservedly recognised - my personal favourite. Where to start with: Terry Pratchett www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...
Where to start with: Terry Pratchett
Ten years on from his death and just before what would have been his 77th birthday, take a deep dive into the funny, fantasy works of one of the most loved British writers
theguardian.com
Another fascinating generic repurposing potential use case!
Derek Lowe@dereklowe.bsky.social · last yr.The vintage antibiotic streptomycin might be useful in treating metastatic cancer. A surprising result:
GOOD NEWS! Researchers at the University of Buffalo have developed a nanoparticle-based vaccine candidate for H5N1 avian influenza (clade 2.3.4.4b) that achieved 100% PROTECTION in preclinical trials. The vaccine is under development for potential use in BOTH veterinary AND human medicine. 🧪🧵⬇️
Really lovely story to read and definitely recommend his Substack.
Sam Freedman@samfr.bsky.social · last yr.As it's the fourth anniversary of me nearly dying and my life completely changing - here's the post I wrote on the first anniversary. Always feels like I should mark it somehow. (Free to read). samf.substack.com/p/lessons-fr...
Worrying if true. Brought this quote to mind for me: "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
John Burn-Murdoch@jburnmurdoch.ft.com · last yr.NEW 🧵 Is human intelligence starting to decline? Recent results from major international tests show that the average person’s capacity to process information, use reasoning and solve novel problems has been falling since around the mid 2010s What should we make of this? www.ft.com/content/a801...
People born in the late 1960s: one of the measles vaccines in use then generated poor immunity. Check your measles titer – or do what I did today: get a booster shot! @adamratnermd.bsky.social
Sounds like sensible pro growth policy. But I think "lab grown" needs a rebrand. Maybe "cruelty free"?
James O'Malley@jamesomalley.co.uk · last yr.This is great news for human progress. It's also the government doing what I argued it should do 18 months ago, and turn Britain into a lab meat superpower: takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/brexit-bri... www.thegrocer.co.uk/news/food-sa...
“For people like myself who have long taken pride in PEPFAR, it’s been painful and horrifying to watch this lifesaving work grind to a halt without a justification or even acknowledgment that it’s happening.”
Killing PEPFAR means killing millions of people
All to save 0.08 percent of the budget.
vox.com
The new GOV.UK login system is the first step in a radical transformation of the British state (FREE TO READ!) takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/login-to-a...
The new GOV.UK login system is the first step in a radical transformation of the British state
A British "DOGE" (of sorts) is rearchitecting the government
takes.jamesomalley.co.uk
Powerful defence of basic research (with some fascinating examples) asteriskmag.com/issues/09/a-...
A Defense of Weird Research—Asterisk
Government-funded scientific research may appear strange or impractical, but it has repeatedly yielded scientific breakthroughs — and continues to pay for itself many times over.
asteriskmag.com
Interesting research. I think diabetes also linked with increased likelihood of drug resistant TB...
ᐯIᑕTOᖇ ᑎIᘔET, ᗰᗪ@nizet.bsky.social · last yr.𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗼𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲: 𝗗𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗲𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝘂𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗔𝗠𝗥 Staphylococcus aureus evolves antibiotic resistance rapidly in diabetic mice, as hyperglycemia aids the expansion and takeover of resistant mutants VISA strains have a large fitness defect in control mice but not in diabetic mice ➡️ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗼𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲: 𝗗𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗲𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝘂𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗔𝗠𝗥 Staphylococcus aureus evolves antibiotic resistance rapidly in diabetic mice, as hyperglycemia aids the expansion and takeover of resistant mutants VISA strains have a large fitness defect in control mice but not in diabetic mice ➡️ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Diabetes potentiates the emergence and expansion of antibiotic resistance
Diabetic infections are a reservoir for the emergence and proliferation of antibiotic resistance in Staphylococcus aureus.
science.org
Two weeks into President Trump’s sweeping freeze on foreign aid, HIV groups abroad have not received any funding, jeopardizing the health of more than 20 million people, including 500,000 children.
Trump’s Foreign Aid Freeze Leaves Millions Without HIV Treatment
President Trump’s pause on aid, and the gutting of the primary aid agency, could jeopardize the health of more than 20 million people worldwide, including 500,000 children, experts say.
nytimes.com
Research funding opportunities for generic repurposing clinical trials -> www.cureswithinreach.org/programs/fun...
Funding Opportunities / RFPs - Cures Within Reach
Funding opportunities for clinical trials repurposing research in any unsolved disease.
cureswithinreach.org
I’m tired of hearing about bats. Do you want to hear a story about jumping spiders and the town that disappeared? I think I might be breaking this story – do come be the first to read it.
