the rollout of the mRNA vaccines was one of the greatest public health triumphs in history and the end result has been the all-around triumph of the antivax movement and I will never get over it

I’m sorry did he just say FUDGY PEOPLE?!?!?

For both #RareDisease month and #MarfanSyndrome awareness month, I thought I'd share this article I wrote for the @ahajournals.bsky.social about being a patient-scientist working on developing genetic therapies for my condition and related conditions.

happy Marfan awareness month from me and my now partial weight bearing left knee almost stuck the move though, but my leg completely crumpled in the fall

The scale of the loss is unimaginable. www.science.org/content/arti...

Alex Pretti’s coworkers take a moment of silence this morning

This is my favorite part of my #PhD defense presentation, my acknowledgement to NIH where I started my scientific career. I am proud of myself for using my platform to speak out about the tragedy of science in this country. @standupforscience.bsky.social

Yesterday was perfect. My whole community came out to support me, and as I looked around at my closest friends and family during our four course dinner, I asked myself over and over “how did I get so lucky?” Dr. Lauren Catherine Testa, Ph.D.

I'm going to be sharing several projects tomorrow, including some unpublished Marfan work I did early on in my PhD. I learned a lot from the project, but therapeutically it didn't pan out how I'd hoped. At first I was almost embarrassed to publicly share a project like this but you know what?

it’s HAPPENING

In fencing (at least in high school and college club fencing), if the referee isn’t sure about a call, they can throw the point out. It’s frustrating but fencers tend to respect that more than making something up. I wonder if this could apply to other sports…

Look not to be all tin foil hat but idk if I like that ONE team in the nfl is acclimated to high altitude and the rest aren’t…

so proud of this team and this work!

Yeah I’m speechless not gonna lie

please let this be the season of the pitt where a young woman of completely average stature shows up to the ER with the worst chest pain she's ever had in her life and none of the doctors think it's marfan because she doesn't look like she has it, but it is and everyone examines their own biases

I am an approved adopter at a dog rescue in my city and the rescue posted three adorable black lab puppies today and I am genuinely devastated that I can't get one because getting a puppy three months before moving across the country is a terrible idea :( did i make the wrong career move

these PhD thesis defense stress dreams are something else….last night I had a dream that three girls from my college sorority changed my slides right before my talk because they wanted more pictures of themselves in my slides LOL

literally need to postpone processing the events of today because I still have not processed the trauma of the last year!!!

Defending my #PhD, “Therapeutic Genome Editing for Hereditary Connective Tissue Disorders”, three weeks from today on Friday Jan 23 at 11AM EST! please DM me for the Zoom link! Thankful to everyone whos supported me along the way🩷 I cried during my practice talk so you KNOW it’s gonna be good! 😂

Since McDermott is 7-1 without glasses I took my glasses off so now I can’t see the tv but I can hear the audio!!

not a doctor but I do not recommend that anyone with Marfan shovel snow or watch the bills game today lol

Zoe Weissman, a sophomore at Brown University, joins us to discuss the shooting on Brown's campus in Providence, Rhode Island. She was in middle school in Parkland, Florida during the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School massacre. She is now an advocate for gun control and gun violence prevention.

I just learned that a PhD student at Hopkins, Ethan Neumann, died of the type of cancer that he had been studying for his PhD. He was in the program I would have been in if I hadn’t gone into Penn. It’s tragic to hear of a fellow patient-scientist passing away. I admire his bravery on his journey.

ARE YOU JOKING

I got home at 10pm last night after one of the craziest weeks of my life: five flights in seven days, including two cross-country flights (one at 6:30am), and within 48 hours I boarded 3 flights in 3 different states! It was HARD but it was absolutely incredible and I am thankful for every moment!

fun climb today that put juuust enough pressure on my hip joints 😅 Lauren 1, Marfan 0!

happy thanksgiving from the WINNER OF THE COOKIE BAKING CONTEST

my team vs my PI’s team today. David vs Goliath. This is my Super Bowl 🫡

ngl i kind of regret sharing work i am extremely proud of on the same day that the epstein files were released 🙃🫠

Excited to share the second half of my #PhD work, "Liver-directed base editing of ABCC6 prevents ectopic calcification in a variant-humanized mouse model of pseudoxanthoma elasticum", published recently in Molecular Therapy: Nucleic Acids! @moltherapy.bsky.social 1/

Can personalized treatment become the standard of care? Just published in @ajhgnews.bsky.social, @kiranmusunuru.bsky.social, MD, PhD, and @ahrensnicklas.bsky.social, MD, PhD, explore their vision for the future of interventional genetics: www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltex... #ASHG #HumanGenetics

🧬Proud to share "Improved specificity and efficiency of in vivo adenine base editing therapies with hybrid guide RNAs" my 1st first-author paper of my PhD, co-first-authored with the brilliant Dr. @mnwhittaker.bsky.social, is out today in Nature Biomedical Engineering! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

He orders extrajudicial killings. He sent troops into our cities. He terrorizes citizens with ICE raids. He raised taxes without congressional approval. He has ruined American farmers and ranchers. He plans to starve the vulnerable. He demolished our house. Remove him from office.

“My name is Dr. Sara Teichholtz. And I’m here because in 2023, NIH saved my life.” From the NIH #NoKings rally this weekend. Powerful and honest and brave from Sara. 🧪

Philadelphia Freedom. 🇺🇸 #NoKings

Here’s to people with #marfansyndrome living longer healthier lives 🥺 #ASHG25

Looking forward to connecting with all of you at #ASHG25 (once our flight is able to take off! 😅)! Excited to meet others in the #raredisease field! my talk is Thursday at 1:30 - the last talk of my #PhD before I’m doctor and I couldnt ask for a better venue for it!

really well said, as someone with a life-limiting genetic disorder it was both beautiful and really challenging to witness the baby KJ story unfold every day before my eyes in real time. obviously I am so so so happy for him and his family!

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

Wanted to share my talk details for those attending #ASHG25 ! My talk "Therapeutic genome editing for the hereditary connective tissue disorder pseudoxanthoma elasticum" will be Thursday in the Gene Editing and Gene Replacement for Rare Disease session! Excited to connect with all of you!

It’s that time of the bills game where I start contemplating the antihypertensives a liiiittle bit earlier than scheduled 😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬

Every day of writing my dissertation I alternate between “I am a subject matter expert” and “I’ve learned nothing in five years” and there is no in between

What’s the point of spending 273627363 in school as a budding young scientist if no one LISTENS TO EXPERTISE

I’ve started a weekend routine of reading my book along the schuylkill river overlooking the art museum and it’s been so relaxing 🥲 gearing up for another week

🚨Exciting news! Dr. T. incoming! 🚨 I will be defending my #PhD, "Therapeutic genome editing for hereditary connective tissue disorders", on January 23, 2026! My defense will be at 11AM on Penn's campus and Zoom. Message me for the link if you'd like to attend.

I started writing my PhD dissertation today. Rather than a traditional dedication, my dedication page will contain a poem that @sambranopoet.bsky.social showed me. It's the most accurate depiction of being a patient-scientist that I've found since starting my work. verse.press/poem/poem-to...

Jersey ✅ @athleticbrewingco.bsky.social Oktoberfest ✅ Snacks ✅ GO BILLS

A federal judge in Boston said she found it "difficult to conclude anything other than that [the Trump administration] used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country's premier universities, and did so in a way that runs afoul of [federal law]."

does anyone know of any biological mechanism or example of AAV therapy (with a tissue-specific capsid) making aortic aneurysm worse.....asking for a friend......

Spring, my five month old foster working dog in training, went to a meeting with me on campus today. She did great!