Ed Reznik

This study changed the way I think about cachexia. For a long time we have been looking for tumor-secreted factors that induce sickness and wasting. @ThalesPapaG now shows us that the "sickness signal" can be transmitted directly to the brain via sensory neurons. Congrats to the whole team. #CANCAN @CancerGrand @theNCI @CRUKresearch science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Anatomical dynamics define cancer cachexia subtypes and identify systemic inflammation as a marker of lethal wasting @EdReznik medrxiv.org/content/10.648…

Please RT: official post forthcoming, but for those currently hunting for postdocs, my group will have a fully funded position for an individual to lead our activities in computational analysis of radiographic data. If you have those skills and want to dream, please reach out.

Congratulations Ziad, watch out world

Why do VEGFR-TKI + IO combinations produce impressive responses in ccRCC but often fail to achieve the long-term durability seen with dual checkpoint blockade? Check out our lab's latest in @Cancer_Cell led by the incredible Lyn Vuong! cell.com/cancer-cell/fu…

🚨 really pleased to post a new preprint from our lab, where we describe an ancient metabolic axis that controls mtDNA copy number and mitochondrial content; a mechanism we uncovered in human cells that stretches through evolution to control mtDNA in flies, yeast and even plants!

@iskander But tRNAs are typically not polyadenylated right? Not in your library

@EdReznik + tRNAs! But the noise introduced from sample condition + prep methods make this unusable in practice (when comparing across diverse sample origins)

Trick I've found useful for analyzing tumor RNA: zero out mitochondrial genes (including mt-tRNA), NUMTs, rRNA, rRNA pseudogenes, & MALAT1/NEAT1. Renormalize TPM (so values add up to 10^6). Cleans up noise from sample degradation, enrichment method, &c Does this have a name?

@iskander mtDNA encodes just 13 proteins that ultimately determine the most basic metabolic decision for a cell, to respire or ferment. i think that's as basic a feature of tumor biology as you're going to get.

@EdReznik Sometimes 5%, sometimes 30%! rRNA variance is even crazier, can get up to 90% depending on enrichment and sample degradation For my use cases though that’s pure noise, deflating TPMs of informative markers that are actually useful for reasoning about tumor biology

@notSoJunkDNA @iskander yes, mtdna is polyadenylated

@iskander should it be called "in silico poly-A enrichment"? most of the genes you propose to erase are not polyadenylated, are they?

Thrilled to receive the Gerstner Physician Scholars’ grant! The grant will support our work for the next 3 years on mitochondrial DNA mutations in cancer. Very thankful for the mentorship from Craig Thompson, @EdReznik, @motzermd, @arihakimi and many others! @MSK_DeptOfMed

Thanks to the many, many people who helped and guided along the way, and to the funders, esp @psscra for their investment in this high-risk science before we had anything to tangible to show for it, and to @CancerGrand + CANCAN for supporting new ideas in cachexia science

Lots of implications from this, but the biggest one is that we firmly believe a framework like this could be used to pioneer a precision medicine trial for cancer cachexia, matching tx to subtype.

Very excited to report on our lab’s unexpected adventure into subtyping cancer cachexia by way of anatomy, where we study the evolution of the bodies (not the genomes!) of patients with cancer during profound weight loss. Led by Sonia Boscenco. medrxiv.org/content/10.648…