Happy to share this new, very intentional chapter. I have left UCLA after 14 years to join the University of Colorado Anschutz as Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Neurosurgery and the inaugural Marsico Chair in Excellence in Functional Precision Medicine/n news.cuanschutz.edu/dbmi/cu-ansc...

Last day at UCLA, fourteen years in the making. Very excited for what is ahead. Huge kudos to my team and our fantastic collaborators, they keep me going.

I have a 166,000 word, ~700 page document of how NOT OK scientists have been in the last year.

I will never stop advocating for an edit button

Making a faculty transition painful is one thing. Making it painful for trainees and lab staff is something else entirely. It is failure. It is not procedural. It is not an accident. It's a choice. You all can do better.

Schools are back, and so am I. Happy new year everyone May this year be.. different

Long time off this platform.. excited to be back to share that I have been elected President of the @thesfpm.bsky.social alongside @boehmjesse.bsky.social. This community has been a true home for those of us for whom patient-derived models and functional testing belong at the center of cancer care/n

Excited to launch an openRxiv partnership with the scientist-run AI review service qed (@qedscience.bsky.social), the brainchild of @odedrechavi.bsky.social 1/n openrxiv.org/enabling-rev...

I was a UC PPFP fellow when I was a postdoc at UCSD. This program is invaluable--aside from support for two years of my postdoc, I received excellent mentoring from faculty at the UCs. This fellowship set me up for success and gave me a cohort of fellow postdocs who are now UC faculty. 1/2

What news, wow. Gone as it came, despite an (alleged?) decade of funds at hand. I guess there is still a great deal of work to do to find viable alternative paths to academia www.statnews.com/2025/11/04/a...

A good evening all around, finally 💪

Multi-Year funding analysis, a 🧵 I have been trying to find a robust way of quantifying and understanding multi-year (forward funding). First, some background: Most NIH grants are for multiple years (2 to 5, typically). However, the are usually funded on an annual basis. 1/18

Contributed to this piece in Cancer Discovery on the new NIH organoid effort. Amid all uncertainty, good to see real commitment to human models and standards. Organoids are central to how we study disease and test therapies- it is about time the system reflects it 🔗 aacrjournals.org/cdnews/news/...

Okay so as promised... let's go through this paper and why it matters 🧵 #medsky #immunosky #idsky

@joann-trejo.bsky.social, @marymunson4.bsky.social and I have a commentary in @natcellbio.nature.com on recent attacks on DEI in biomedical research: "If scientific research, especially biomedical research, is meant to serve everyone, then it requires that everyone has an opportunity to participate"

What incredible news today. I feel so grateful to have worked closely with Tony over the years and to have witnessed firsthand his vision, energy, and commitment to advancing functional precision medicine. I cannot think of a steadier (and more needed) force at the NCI at this time /n

Dear Editor, Thank you for submitting your review request to Tomer Ullman. As you may know, we decline a substantial proportion of reviews requests without sending them out for further evaluation. After careful consideration, we regret to say we cannot offer to take on this review.

I was going to write a whole post about all this incredible work with all these amazing scientists and organizations, but I’ll just leave @stellatecomms.bsky.social design sizzle reel here. It speaks for itself. youtu.be/x2O7DkpIoCA?...

Not sure what the best way forward is. The general confusion, lack of funding, and the slow destruction of the NIH feels hopeless, if you let it. For now I'll keep circling back to science, and know very well I am privileged to be able to do so. We all got to cope somehow, it's such a long way to go

Glad to share this podcast, it was a fun one to record! Quite the ride of a conversation too… from my beginnings in protein aggregation, to patient-derived organoids for rare cancers, with detours through twitter and the shifting world of science comms stemcellpodcast.com/ep-303-organ...

Science persists ✊ Good to keep that in mind, these days

“‘She uncovered the social experience of women in science’ — the lab assistants who never became managers, the geologists poring over data in government offices while their male peers were doing fieldwork, those who despite their advanced degrees didn’t get hired or promoted, or who were sidelined…”

Learn more about Dr. Soragni's patient-derived #organoids in our next episode!

"CDC basically imploded yesterday and now it’s truly in shambles,” said @kkjetelina.bsky.social. Also: vaccines? My latest: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Was a guest on the @stemcellpodcast.com a couple days ago, and we spent a fair bit reminescing on old twitter, and talking about bsky, linkedin and how critical it is to remain connected despite all challenges. We all miss old twitter, but we made do arstechnica.com/science/2025...

"Tao is one of the most prominent mathematicians and academics to publicly oppose the administration’s actions, calling them an “existential threat” to his field, and academic science, more broadly. He said public advocacy is a priority over his research, for now." www.nbcnews.com/science/scie...

Big day for our team: our pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma (PPGL) organoid paper is now up on bioRxiv! This was a tour de force across 6 institutions, 37 authors, building patient-derived organoids from 35 PPGL patients /🧵 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Big day for our team: our pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma (PPGL) organoid paper is now up on bioRxiv! This was a tour de force across 6 institutions, 37 authors, building patient-derived organoids from 35 PPGL patients /🧵 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Really excited that our manuscript on Synovial Sarcoma is now online. Link to Open Access PDF: tinyurl.com/55bnssws A summary🧵 :

Very exciting finding in Ewing sarcoma, with the identification of CXADR as a critical regulator of metastatic spread. This opens the opportunity to target AKT signaling in combos to reduce metastases in a disease where treatments for advanced cancer are lacking and largely ineffective. Brilliant!

UC reports today that $584 million in grant funding to UCLA has been suspended. This adds to months of delays, some previous cancellations, and uncertainty around fund disbursement even prior to the freeze. Where do we go from here www.latimes.com/california/s...

Well, the times sure are unprecedented. This UCLA federal funding freeze piles onto the uncertainty, hiring remains frozen, much (most?) of funding is now also frozen and science feels minutes away from flatlining. CPR time is now. Hate all of this, for all of us.

Lawmakers to NIH: Use it or lose it. 14 Republican Senators—including key appropriators—are urging the White House to release NIH FY25 funds without delay, warning that stalled spending could harm future research budgets. Read more: www.ascb.org/science-poli...

Yet another stop to awarding research grants. This is disastrous folks

New Science story about multi-year funding and it potential catastrophic consequences www.science.org/content/arti... 1/n

historical

This 4th percentile funding cutoff for the NCI is so very catastrophic. Assuming a 4th percentile payline corresponds to a ~5% success rate, it would take 27 grant submissions to have an 80% chance of getting just one funded. At the current submission cap of 6 apps as PI/year that means 4.5 years

NCI funding, possibly, up to 4%. Gutting cancer research because, you know, cancer is not a big health issue. Quite speechless www.cancer.gov/grants-train...

Witnessing the death of federally funded research in the US in real time is just as horrendous and shocking as you thought it may be. Will impact the country and the health of its citizens for years to come.

We are going to hear a lot in the near future about how University brass “has to make hard decisions”. Twill be interesting to see who those hard decisions land upon.

Happy to share a new publication from the Children’s Oncology Group, in which I had the pleasure of contributing alongside an incredible multidisciplinary team /🧵 authors.elsevier.com/a/1lPta_Lqip...

Summary Table of the massive defunding of biomedical research in the United States www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

New strategies using AI, high-throughput platforms & predictive modeling aim to prevent acquired therapeutic resistance. Reference www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨 New Article Alert! Dive into a fantastic review by several @thesfpm.bsky.social members on how new technologies and functional approaches are revolutionizing personalized cancer treatment. Don't miss out on this game-changing insight! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

POV: all is on fire but a bunch of grant deadlines are creeping in

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

Wiping out hope, and progress, and generations of researchers

Join us this Wednesday 06/11 @ 12:00 PM EST for our monthly SFPM seminar! Dr. Chris Steffi from CompagOs will discuss: "Pioneering Solutions to Understand, Diagnose and Treat Bone Conditions" More info & link to join: www.sfpm.io/seminars

🚨Roadmap 🚨 Alice Soragni @alice.soragnilab.com‬, Erik S. Knudsen ‪@roswellpark.bsky.social‬ ‪ & Co discuss the mechanisms of acquired resistance and the models to better study it to advance predictive and proactive prevention in cancer therapy. 📖 ⬇️

"If leadership in major science organizations continue to hew closely to administration talking points as a means to steer policy decisions, the public may perceive that bad-faith arguments of the White House have broader legitimacy amongst scientists." 🧪 open.substack.com/pub/joshuasw...