Can the aged tissue microenvironment help predict cancer recurrence? Welcome Adelina Gheorghe, a medical oncologist joining our team to test this question in the clinic and help move our findings toward better patient care.

Your epigenome may record the exposures of your life. At our Aging & Cancer Lab seminar, Silvana Maas (Seoane Lab) showed how lifestyle and environmental exposures leave marks on DNA that can be decoded to reconstruct exposures linked to early-onset colorectal cancer. #Aging&CancerLabseminars

Eric J. Chow et al. find that dexrazoxane given with doxorubicin in childhood cancer is linked to improved long-term cardiac function and lower risk of poor left ventricular function in adult survivors. #JournalClub ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/...

Piotr et al. report that intravenous iron in a mouse cancer model increases tumor iron, promotes tumor growth, and blunts anti-tumor CD8⁺ T cell responses, reducing immunotherapy/chemo efficacy. #JournalClub www.frontiersin.org/journals/onc...

A shared DNA methylation drift occurs with aging and tumorgenesis in the colon. Age-related inflammation and reduced Wnt signaling, which dysregulate iron metabolism and impair TET activity, drive this epigenetic drift. #JournalClub www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Ferritin buffers intracellular iron and protects cells from iron toxicity. Yi et al. show that deleting the ferritin heavy chain (Fth1) impairs normal HSPC function but restricts AML progression and prolongs survival in mice. #JournalClub www.nature.com/articles/s41...

When Ning, Francesca & Marc were selected to speak @senescel.org 2025, they gave it their all, refining every argument and minute. Their talks put our metabolic bottleneck model of aging on the field’s radar. 👏 What do you think drives tissue aging, the cell or its environment? 🤔

Postdoc | VHIO, Barcelona Immunotherapies succeed in only ~20% of cases. Help us break resistance by engineering the right environment. Join the Aging & Cancer Lab 🌍 👉 Apply: vhiovidaprogramme.eu/recruitment/ | mauslab.org

📖Culture dishes and in vivo studies are not our only experiments. As our lab turns soon 3, we keep on testing how to grow a culture where ideas and people thrive. For anyone curious about the science of teamwork, The Culture Code is a brilliant field guide. 📖 #LabReads

📃By integrating single-cell RNA sequencing datasets, Cong et al. characterize the evolution and interactome of hematopoietic niche from embryonic development to aging. #JournalClub pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39698109/

Lung cancer reprograms the bone marrow to its advantage. Hedge et al. ( @miriammerad.bsky.social lab) show that tumors trigger an NRF2-driven stress response in myeloid precursors, which then suppress anti-tumor immunity. Blocking NRF2 boosts immunotherapy. #JC 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#CCESumSchool25 Day 2 🧬 • Lectures: Fundamental Research, Patient-centered Research, Proteomics • Workshop: Patient Involvement • First Poster Session! @vhio.bsky.social @nkinl.bsky.social @nct-heidelberg.bsky.social @gustaveroussy.fr @ki.se @zwartlab.bsky.social @mauslab.bsky.social

Hear from Aistė Avižaitė, who joined us from Lithuania to explore aging & cancer and grow in translational oncology at @vhio.bsky.social. ▶️https://youtube.com/shorts/q0g6zdywe6s

📰 In aging bone marrow, cancerous clones thrive by adapting through mutations. Kang et al. show that giving immune cells the same mutations tilts the balance back—helping them resist exhaustion and fight cancer in this hostile niche. #JournalClub 🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

📰Aging disrupts metabolic supply chains, constraining cell renewal. But how do we detect these shortages? In >5000 patients, Tapio et al. show that low ferritin is the best predictor for bone marrow iron. A study with broad implications. hashtag #JournalClub 🔗 ashpublications.org/bloodadvance...

📑Why don’t senescent cells fix their DNA? Daigh et al. (Meyer lab) report that uncoupling mTORC1 from E2F sustains transcription-linked DNA damage in senescence. #JournalClub www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Why do TET2-mutant preleukemic cells outcompete healthy HSCs? Yang et al. show that these cells upregulate MPL (thrombopoietin receptor, TPO-R) signaling, giving a clonal edge; inhibiting this pathway reduces it. #JournalClub www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Why do ring sideroblasts arise in MDS? Often via SF3B1-driven mitochondrial iron buildup. Inokura et al. tested TET2’s role: Tet2-deficient mice show systemic iron overload, and anemia. No classical RS, but intriguing parallels. #JournalClub www.exphem.org/article/S030...

🌱We are delighted to welcome Gloria Ariño from Universidad Europea de Madrid as our third summer intern!🌟 Gloria will explore how aging creates metabolic bottlenecks in the colon and how these shape tumorigenesis. With Gloria, Laura & Aiste, our summer intern dream team is complete!💪

📑Immunotherapy responses differ markedly between MMR-proficient and -deficient colorectal cancers. A scRNA-seq study of 62 patients by ‪@pelkalab.bsky.social‬ et al. (Hacohen lab) reveals key immune–tumor communication differences that may explain this. #JournalClub www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

🎯 The Aging and Cancer Lab is not afraid of tough battles — in science or laser tag. What connects aging and cancer? Can we stop it? We team up and take aim together at the route causes.. 🔬💥

🌱Excited to welcome Aistė Avižaitė from Lithuania’s @VU_LT to the lab this summer! She’ll be studying how chemotherapy alters metabolism in healthy tissues and how this may drive accelerated aging in childhood cancer survivors. #Aging #Cancer #SummerIntern

200 years ago in Barcelona, your 40s meant preparing for death. Today, you might have 40 more years ahead. But as @sjayolshansky et al. show, most gains came from reducing early death. Further progress depends on tackling aging and its consequences. #JC www.nature.com/articles/s43...

🌱 Welcome aboard, Laura! Joining us this summer from @URV_universitat, Laura Boró García will be exploring how aging and chemotherapy disrupt metabolism and epigenetics in the bone marrow. We’re thrilled to have her with us! 🧬🧪 #Aging #Cancer #SummerIntern

Longer lives in laboratory conditions may compromise survival in the real world. In a large study on genetically diverse mice, Di Francesco et al. in Jackson Labs show that lifespan extension under caloric restriction doesn’t always improve health. #JournalClub www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Longer lives in laboratory conditions may compromise survival in the real world. In a large study on genetically diverse mice, @DiFrancescoA et al. in @jacksonlab show that lifespan extension under caloric restriction doesn’t always improve health. #JournalClub www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In a preprint, Han et al. from @yibinkang’s lab report that cancer cells in bone metastases hijack iron from bone marrow macrophages that normally support red blood cell production — linking anemia to metastatic progression. #JournalClub www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

What makes a bag of cells become a complex, intelligent being—and what breaks those rules to cause aging and system breakdown? Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems offers a toolkit to understand biology, society, and the economy in their native language: systems. #LabReads 📚

Intestinal stem cells (ISCs) with APC mutations outcompete wild-type ISCs by suppressing Wnt signaling in their neighbors - driving colorectal tumor formation. Exciting work from Vermeulen lab! Presented by Marc Guasch @JournalClub www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We are all born with blood cells that could turn into cancer. But aging and chemo don’t just damage cells—they differently pick the bad ones. Chemo favors TP53-mutant clones giving rise to therapy-related MDS. #JournalClub Ning Huang www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hereditary hemochromatosis related iron overload accelerates age-related cardiac hypertrophy in a mouse model. Francesca Cogo #JournalClub www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Increasing number of young individuals are being diagnosed with colorectal cancer. This week, we hosted medical oncologist Iosune Baraibar, who shared what she at @vhio.bsky.social, and @danafarber.bsky.social collaborators are doing to understand and act on this epidemic. Honored to work at VHIO.

Cellular hypermetabolism drives aging and age-related disease. Gkioni et al. (Partridge lab) show that targeting two independent growth/metabolism regulators synergistically extends lifespan and delays cancer in aging mice. Mate Maus #JournalClub www.nature.com/articles/s43...

For colon cells to form cancer, they must acquire mutations—but how do early mutant clones expand? Vermeulen et al. use lineage tracing to show that competition with wild-type cells is real, and chance dominates. Marc Guasch #JournalClub www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Krotenberg et al. created fluorescent mixed organoids to study cell competition in colorectal cancer. They show cancer cells actively eliminate wild-type neighbors via JNK signaling to fuel their growth. Marc Guasch #JournalClub www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

🚀 Recently, we welcomed Agnese Brischetto as our #JournalClub invited speaker! She shared insights into the biology of psoriasis—an autoimmune skin condition affecting ~3% of the population—along with intriguing findings on potential new treatments.

Atherosclerotic burden drives age-related cardiovascular events. Fuster et al. showed TET2-mutant blood cells—common in the elderly—accelerate atherosclerosis via proinflammatory macrophages. Aging bone marrow may fuel cardiovascular aging. Ning Huang #JournalClub. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Tatiana Cañeque et al. (Rodriguez lab) develop Fento-1, a new molecule that eliminates therapy-resistant CD44⁺ cancer stem cells by targeting lysosomal iron and inducing ferroptosis. Presented by PhD student Francesca Cogo at #JournalClub. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Fascinating study from @miriammerad.bsky.social ’s lab suggests our aging immune system may drive cancer. With age, bone marrow–derived monocyte-lineage cells replace resident lung myeloid cells — fueling tumor growth via IL-1 secretion. 👉https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn0327

Francesca Cogo (PhD student) at #JournalClub: Danian Chen et al. show that shorter cell cycle duration increases susceptibility to tumor initiation—making it a key hallmark of cancer initiation. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Imagine a world where you can choose your child’s traits or rewrite your own genes to cure disease or extend life. This month, we recommend The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee — a gripping history of how we came to understand, and are beginning to rewrite, the code of inheritance.

"Yu-Jung Tseng and colleagues @NakadaLab show that iron acts as a critical signal to activate splenic blood stem cells for red blood cell production during acute anemia — in a TET2-dependent manner." - Ning Huang, PhD student #JournalClub www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚀 Recently, we welcomed Sefora Conti as our #JournalClub invited speaker! She shared how she has used tools from mechanobiology, meta-analysis, and bioinformatics to uncover what drives metastasis in gastrointestinal tumors. 👉https://vhio.net/pf/upper-gastrointestinal-and-endocrine-tumor-group/

#JournalClub "We’re born as genomic mosaics, each cell unique. With age, this diversity is overtaken by a few dominant clones — a shift linked to frailty. Mack et al. dive into large human datasets to uncover what drives this process." - Mate Maus www.nature.com/articles/s43...

#JournalClub "Ian Folkert and and colleagues show that iron-rich tumor-associated macrophages shape anti-tumor immunity — pointing to a promising new target to boost immunotherapy responses." - Marc Guasch, PhD student rupress.org/jem/article/...

#JournalClub "Panjrath et al. show that dietary iron loading exacerbates doxorubicin-induced heart damage in rats, highlighting the role of iron in cardiotoxicity." - Francesca Cogo, PhD student www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#JournalClub "Wang et. al identify mechanisms underlying intestinal aging in non-human primates with a multi-omics approach, and assess their functional relevance in C. elegans models." - Marc Guasch, PhD student www.nature.com/articles/s43...

#JournalClub "In search of lifespan-extending interventions, Widjaja et al. show that inhibiting IL-11—a pro-inflammatory protein—improves late-life health and extends lifespan in mice. Whether this translates to humans remains to be seen." – Mate Maus www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#JournalClub "Abe et al. show that doxorubicin induces heart damage by disrupting heme synthesis and cellular iron metabolism, and highlight 5-ALA as a potential therapeutic for cancer survivors" - Francesca Cogo, PhD student www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#JournalClub "Laura Crisafulli and her colleagues found that mouse models with iron trapping in macrophages develop microcytic anemia, with interesting implications for aging." - Ning Huang, PhD student onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...