Slava Epelman

Our latest study, led by @Homaira_H. Hard to study #macrophages (MFs) in early human heart development (no tissue). Homaira integrated human ES-derived-MFs into beating cardiac microtissues & improved🫀function. rdcu.be/dHbj0. #cardioimmunology #regeneration.

@LabWaggoner @SciImmunology @theonlylabever @UofT science.org/eprint/XBEHHIP… open access link!

Un grupo de genetistasen EE.UU. ha investigado la pureza genética de los modelos de ratón usados en biomedicina y ha encontrado que solo un 20% de las estirpes de ratón contienen las variantes genéticas que su nombre indica. Publicado en @ScienceMagazine science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

🚨What if we could reliably program macrophage polarization state?🚨 biorxiv.org/content/10.648… Macrophages are highly plastic immune cells that perform critical functions by polarizing into distinct cellular states. The polarization state of macrophages can substantially influences the progression of cancers, infections, and autoimmunity. (1/11)

Sustaining microglial reparative function enhances stroke recovery | Nature nature.com/articles/s4158…

nature.com/articles/s4158… -> organ specific ECM shapes identities of intrinsic nervous systems. v cool!

Huge congratulations to @XiangyuZ0321 of @PittDeptofMed @PittVMI receiving his 1st #NIH R01 to study #macrophage #leucine manipulation as diagnostic & therapeutic strategy in #CVD #atherosclerosis. A force in @RazaniLab for years now becoming our alumni & starting Zhang Lab! 🤩🥳

@milicaruoft @TohidDidar @McMasterU @UofT Congrats!!!

Honored to become a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences yesterday in Montreal! Congrats to @TohidDidar and @Arinjay Banerjee great to see folks from my alma mater @McMasterU! Thanks @UofT @UofT for the support!

Loss of the cytosolic DNA exonuclease TREX1 predisposes mice to autoimmunity while promoting robust antitumor immunity @genentech science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

The number of new potential ways to rev up the immune response to cancer keeps expanding. Today it's STING-ing it. @ScienceMagazine science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

The mechanism by which macrophage cells sense danger to drive an immune response and inflammation has been elusive. A new report highlights change in cell volume as the signal @JCellBiol rupress.org/jcb/article/22…

1/7🎉 Introducing Phoenix: generative AI predicting spatially resolved gene expression from routine H&E slides-enabling virtual spatial-omics. Zero-shot. Across cancers, organs & species. Huge thanks to my co-first @TranManuel & all collaborators! 🙌 📜: doi.org/10.64898/2026.…

Our new preprint is a significant milestone for us We built "HealthFormer" by training on our deeply phenotyped cohort from the Human Phenotype Project data. Healthformer is a multimodal generative transformer model that tokenizes each participant's physiological trajectory across 667 modalities (biomarkers, body comp, sleep, CGM, microbiome, wearables, meds) and is trained with a single objective: predict the next measurement Forecasting, risk stratification, and intervention-conditioned simulation all arise as queries from one shared representation Key findings: → Matches direction of effect in 41/41 published RCTs; 30/41 within the reported 95% CI → Reconstructs biomarkers at r > 0.9; forecasts 2 yrs ahead → Validation on external data from UK Biobank, NHANES, PNP3, Framingham → Outperforms Framingham CVD & PREVENT-ASCVD on 27/30 endpoints → Predicts individual 6-mo responses in a held-out RCT Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2604.27899 Great work by Guy Lutsker, Gal Sapir, Jordi Merino, Smadar Shilo, Anastasia Godneva, Eli Meirom, Shie Mannor, Hagai Rossman, Gal Chechik

Is a chicken’s head more stable than a $5,000 camera gimbal?

Interleukin-1 Inhibitors for Management of Recurrent Pericarditis After Thoracic Organ Transplantation | JACC: Case Reports jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.… Good reading, thanks @garshick

So you want to engineer your hiPSCs, but targeting DNA payloads requires multiple slow, inefficient steps for each construct. What if we could accomplish multi-site integration seamlessly? Come hear about STRAIGHT-IN Dual now out at Nature Biomedical Engineering! 🧵 Link at end!

Expanded benefits reported today for GLP-1 therapy @JAMADerm Extragenital lichen sclerosus jamanetwork.com/journals/jamad… Potential for psoriasis, a review of evidence jamanetwork.com/journals/jamad…

Citrulline regulates macrophage metabolism and inflammation to counter aging in mice science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

New @ScienceMagazine Why is the heart resistant to cancer? Role of the heart beat! Mechanical force helps protect the heart from cancer science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Poor sleep impairs immune responses and influenza vaccine protection @NatureComms nature.com/articles/s4146… @Mizzou