Michael Iskols

Incredibly excited to share our (@leonard_qi) preprint from the Ginty Lab studying the Krause corpuscle, a population of sensory endings in the genitalia that detect light touch and vibration to enable proper sexual behavior. They’re pretty cool looking too :)

Excited to share our work showing melanoma-innervating sympathetic axons inhibit tumor growth through suppression of pro-tumor macrophages, opposing growth-promoting nociceptive sensory neurons. Can’t wait to build on this work for my thesis!! nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%…

The choroid plexus vasculature comes alive: a dense, mechanosensitive network revealed by #liveimaging and #transcriptomics. Check out our preprint on @biorxivpreprint: biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

Warm congratulations to The Brain Prize winners 2026, Professor David Ginty and Professor Patrik Ernfors, for their pioneering work on how the nervous system detects and processes touch and pain. @hhmi_science #Neuroscience #BrainPrize2026

aDISCO: A clearing method to enable 3D microscopy of large archival paraffin-embedded human tissue blocks Anna Maria Reuss et al. doi.org/10.1101/2025.0…

After many years of work I’m so happy to share our work on how Treg cells modulate nociception to dampen skin inflammation! My handle will make a lot more sense now!🕵🏻‍♀️ science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

🚨Women with ER(–) breast cancer who took aprepitant (anti-nausea drug, NK1R blocker) had a 31% lower risk of metastasis or death (p<0.001) in large Norwegian study by Botteri & Chang. More doses = better survival 📉.Clinically validates our work by @VeenaPadmanaban: neuronal substance P drives BrCA metastasis via tumor NK1R & is blocked by aprepitant. academic.oup.com/jnci/advance-a…. @RockefellerUniv @theNCI

🎉Exciting news! Our latest work on Glioma-Innervating Neurons has just been published in PNAS!🔗 Read the full article here: pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn… A huge thank you to my co-mentors @blsabatini, @HaigisLab and co-authors. @MGHNeuroOnc @MGHCancerCenter @MGHNeurology

This brown bear is performing a “wet dog shake”—a stereotypical behavior observed in most mammals when they get wet or encounter an irritant on their back. Researchers in Science have now identified a type of light touch–sensitive mechanoreceptor associated with underfur that mediates this behavior in mice. Learn more in this week's issue: bit.ly/3CkDON6

Exciting discovery: CSF flow isn't confined to the brain and spinal cord—it also extends to peripheral nerves! @ScienceMagazine science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… Groundbreaking research from @UFHealth @UF #neurotwitter #neuroscience #AcademicChatter

Congrats to my friend and colleague Guosong Hong for his stunning and original discovery, published today in Science, on clearing tissues *in living animals* with a common food dye! The dye is tartrazine, used in Doritos! science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

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I'm thrilled to announce that our latest research on chronic vulvar pain has been published in Brain! doi.org/10.1093/brain/… @Brain1878

@IshmailSaboor @amz2607 Thanks! It’d be great to see where/when/how social and sexual touch converge

News and Views article from me and @amz2607

Welcome @MIskols to the lab for your rotation! Here posing with @CharlesXu3 in the neuro team uniform 👏🏼

Alternate career path?

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with @leonard_qi on this project over the recent years; we explore a dense population of vibration-sensitive neurons in the genitalia and their contribution to sexual behavior (now including the clitorovaginal reflex) nature.com/articles/s4158…

@DavidCRowland Thanks David, it was great working with you!!

Really proud to publish this fascinating paper on receptors responsible for sexual touch. It's easy to get prudish and Victorian on this sort of work, but sexual and reproductive health is extremely important nature.com/articles/s4158…

HOWZAT!!! Nav1.7 as a biomarker of peripheral nerves in mice and primates!!! A fluorescently-tagged 🇵🇪 tarantula NaV1.7-targeted peptide, Tsp1a! 🤯 NaV1.7 targeted fluorescence imaging agents for nerve identification during intraoperative procedures biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

A GWAS of having never experienced a headache in life revealed a signal near ADARB2, which encodes an RNA editing enzyme expressed mainly in the brain. Interestingly, this variant is not associated with migraine or any other forms of headache. Fascinating! Olofsson et al. Comm Bio nature.com/articles/s4200…

Sensory neuronal control of skin barrier immunity dlvr.it/T74kZb