Priyanka Handique

@davidasinclair That’s the core idea of biology, the genome is the script, but regulation decides what actually gets expressed.

The genome largely stays intact. What changes is how it is read

@MarsUniversityX At the core, this is a reflection on human curiosity, we know life is limited, but our search for meaning and knowledge keeps expanding.

Elon Musk: "This is the foundation of my philosophy: I am curious about the nature of the universe... and obviously I will die... But I would like to know that we are on a path to understanding the nature of the universe and the meaning of life and what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe"

@Marian_L_Tupy If AI can reliably detect diseases years before symptoms appear, healthcare shifts from treatment to true prevention. That’s a huge change in what medicine even means.

An AI model that analyzes and predicts cell movement was reportedly able to spot pancreatic cancer three years before doctors reading scans could. Other progress has been shown in detecting other organ diseases, diabetes, high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s.

@agingroy Fascinating direction for diabetes treatment. The idea of the body producing GLP 1 naturally again feels far more elegant than lifelong injections.

500 million people inject GLP-1 drugs daily. @FractylHealt just asked a different question. What if the pancreas made GLP-1 itself? One endoscopic procedure. An AAV vector delivered directly into pancreatic tissue. A gene construct that hijacks beta cells and reprograms them to secrete GLP-1 whenever you eat. No daily shots. No continuous drug levels flooding the bloodstream. Just your own body doing what it forgot to do. RJVA-001 just got authorized for first-in-human trials in the Netherlands. First gene therapy for type 2 diabetes ever cleared for a clinical trial. We’ve been borrowing a hormone from outside for a decade. Someone finally asked whether we could teach the body to make it again. First patient dosing expected second half of 2026. The GLP-1 era isn’t ending. It’s going internal.

@ArthurMacwaters People can work incredibly hard when they truly believe their work matters.

I called my engineer friend at SpaceX the other day. 1am Pacific. 3am in Starbase. He was still in the office and not going home any time soon. And he was happy. Energized. Because he's directly influencing the course of a multi-planetary future for humanity. On a fundamental level, this is why Elon companies win. Young, high-competence people are given exceptional individual agency and semi-impossible problems. And they know that their contribution is essential. Any company that does this is much more likely to succeed. Elon does this without fail. Inspires me a lot.

@paulg The goal should not be banning AI or replacing learning with AI it should be teaching students when and how to use it responsibly.

The right way to use AI in schools is to have sharply different policies about how much you allow it. Using AI should be encouraged in some situations and absolutely banned in others.

@YannickBuccella Interesting that overall cancer rates stayed stable while survival improved in several major cancers. Better therapies are clearly making a real difference.

Norway is to my knowledge the first country in the world to release its whole cancer dataset including 2025. The gist: 1) All cancer cases rate remained stable compared to 2016-2020. 2) the big exception were skin cancer, which increased significantly in both sexes, especially non-melanoma, which is a classic cancer of the elderly, consistent with an ageing society. 3) cervical cancer is at its lowest recorded rate in Norway, with the report tying the long-term decline to detection/treatment of premalignant lesions, HPV vaccination, and the transition to primary HPV testing. 4) lung cancer remains the largest cause of cancer death, but survival has improved, mostly due to targeted therapy and immunotherapy. The same goes for upper GI cancers. 5) the incidence of cancer in young people compared to 2016-2020 did not change significantly.

@MichaelAlbertMD AI can improve healthcare, but if it removes empathy and real physician time, the system may become more efficient while patients feel less cared for.

We are watching a real-time divergence in the value of care. Health systems and VC-backed healthcare models are drifting into a race to the bottom: More volume. Shorter visits. Fewer physicians. Cheaper labor. More task substitution. More AI layered onto broken workflows. The result? Erosion of the physician-patient relationship. Meanwhile, physician-led direct care models are moving in the opposite direction. Longer visits. Better access. Greater accountability. Aligned incentives. Higher-touch care augmented by technology rather than replaced by it. As legacy models optimize for throughput, physician-owned direct care is experiencing an exponential increase in relative value.

@LukeCoutinho17 Most people focus only on food, but stress, eating speed and daily habits matter just as much for acidity. The tea or coffee on an empty stomach point is especially underrated.

My top 3 tips to reduce acidity and heart burn and none of them are about what to eat. 1. Chew your food slowly. Digestion begins in your mouth, not your stomach. Most acidity happens because we eat too fast, too distracted, too stressed. Slow down, and chew. Give your body a chance to do its job. 2. Manage your stress levels. Stress triggers more acid production and slows digestion. I've seen people with a perfect diet still suffer from chronic acidity because their nervous system never gets a break. So eat with a peaceful mind. 3. Stop starting your day with tea or coffee on an empty stomach. I know this is a tough one, but that first cup on an empty stomach is one of the biggest triggers nobody talks about. Eat something small first and then have your chai or coffee. Your body has been asking you to slow down for a while now. Acidity is just one of the ways it's saying it. Which of these are you ignoring? #Acidity #GutHealth #DigestiveHealth #LifestyleMedicine #Wellness #HealthyHabits #StressManagement #Healing #MindBodyHealth #Nutrition #HealthyLiving #AcidReflux #HolisticHealth #TeaAndCoffee #HealthTips

@SecKennedy Good to see bipartisan support for stronger research and awareness around tick borne diseases.

May is Lyme Disease Awareness Month, a time to recognize the growing impact of Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses on American families and communities. Lyme disease now affects an estimated 476,000 Americans each year and remains one of the most common vector-borne diseases in the United States. I recently wrote to the House Energy & Commerce Committee urging support for reauthorization of the Kay Hagan Tick Act to strengthen research, surveillance, early detection, treatment, and public awareness efforts related to tick-borne disease. Thank you to Chairman @RepGuthrie, Ranking Member @FrankPallone, and the House Energy & Commerce Committee for advancing this important bipartisan legislation.

@markchen90 Math may become one of the first fields where AI truly accelerates human discovery.

Very proud that an OpenAI model disproved Erdős’s longstanding unit distance conjecture, with an elegant and intricate proof that brings sophisticated ideas from algebraic number theory to bear on geometry. For whatever reason, mathematics has been the field most amenable to research breakthroughs with AI. I consider it lucky that it was mathematics after all - a field where experts have been willing to engage deeply with us, and with proofs generated by our models. I'm grateful for that, and don't take it for granted. Math is an artistic endeavor, and perhaps for artists, it is precisely their appreciation for art that saves them from the possibly grotesque feeling of a machine producing it. Our goal is not to replace humans. We aim to chart a path forward where humans continue to have a significant role to play, even as we build exceptionally powerful AI. I am excited to use math as a domain to explore these paths, and @SebastienBubeck, @merettm, and I are excited to engage with the broader mathematical community to chart them together. Please reach out if you are interested! I'm optimistic this will help us navigate how AI impacts society in domains like coding and general co-working.

@kevinmd A system where primary care doctors handle most mental health cases but receive almost no real training in it was always going to fail patients. Integrating mental health education throughout medical school could save countless lives.

Primary care doctors handle 75 percent of all mental health care in this country. They receive 2 percent of their total training in it. That is not a resource gap. It is a curriculum failure that has not changed in over a hundred years, and it is killing people. Robert C. Smith, MD, has spent decades in academic medicine trying to fix this. He conducted the randomized controlled trials that identified the first evidence-based patient-centered interviewing method and the first primary care mental health model. He knows what works. The problem is that the system does not want it. The downstream numbers are staggering. There are 48,000 suicides a year in the United States. Half of those people saw their primary care doctor in the two to four weeks before they died. The doctors were not trained to screen for it. There are 15,000 opioid overdose deaths a year from prescriptions written by physicians who were never taught how to manage chronic pain or recognize addiction risk. Nearly 100 million Americans have a major mental health condition and are not receiving adequate care from anyone. It gets worse when you look at chronic disease. Seventeen percent of patients with conditions like diabetes, heart failure, and hypertension carry an untreated major mental disorder. When it goes unrecognized, the physical disease does not improve. That is part of why hospitals see the same patients cycling through readmissions. The structural explanation is the mind-body split that has governed medical training since the scientific revolution. Four years of medical school and three to five years of residency: nothing but physical disease medicine. The only mental health exposure most physicians get is a five-week inpatient psychiatry rotation in their third year, watching patients with schizophrenia and severe personality disorders who look nothing like the patients they will actually see in practice. Smith says the AAMC, ACGME, and AMA have known about this since Engel proposed the bio-psychosocial model in the 1970s. Fifty years of lip service. No change in curriculum. No change in clinical outcomes. Thomas Insel, a former director of NIMH, called it a human rights crisis. The comparison Smith draws is to Ralph Nader and Rachel Carson. The auto industry had seat belts and refused to install them. The chemical industry knew DDT was poisoning the water and refused to stop. Both industries changed only when the public got informed, got angry, and got Congress involved. Smith argues medicine is the same kind of recalcitrant industry, and the same kind of public pressure is the only path to reform. Eighty percent of heart attacks, strokes, and diabetes, and 40 percent of cancers, come from lifestyle factors that doctors are not trained to address through motivational interviewing. Obesity went from 15 percent of the population in 1990 to 50 percent today. The preventive failure alone represents trillions in health care spending that could have been avoided. Smith's message to clinicians is direct: this is not your failure. You were put in an untenable position by a training system that never equipped you for the work you were asked to do. Listen to the full conversation on The Podcast by KevinMD. Link in the replies. What is the single change to medical training that would most reduce the gap between the mental health care doctors provide and the training they actually receive? #ThePodcastbyKevinMD #MentalHealthTraining

@sama I hope AI helps solve the healthcare crisis early disease detection, mental health support, and access to good care for everyone, not just the rich.

what problem do you most hope AI will solve in the future? maybe we can help!

@Neuroscope_mp If fibrosis can truly be slowed across multiple organs at once, it could change how we think about aging itself.

Most people don’t die from “old age”. They die when their heart, lungs, kidneys, or liver slowly scar and fail. Fibrosis contributes to ~35% of all deaths. This IL-11 antibody powerfully reduced fibrosis in multiple organs — and added 25% lifespan in mice. Now in human trials. Full thread with the data 👇

@SmartScience Makes you wonder how many everyday plants and natural compounds subtly affect cognition without us noticing

Research suggests rosemary aroma may temporarily improve memory and concentration. Scientists believe compounds in rosemary, especially 1,8-cineole, may stimulate brain activity linked to learning and recall. In one study, people exposed to rosemary scent performed better on memory tasks and showed increased mental alertness. Source: Northumbria University Study

@latestincosmos The biggest question now is whether we can safely control reprogramming without increasing risks like cancer or unstable cell growth

🚨: Researchers have successfully reversed the biological age of human skin cells by up to 30 years—effectively turning 53-year-old cells into 23-year-old ones—using a technique called partial cellular reprogramming.

@EricTopol Interesting that the challenge is shifting from "can we make weight loss happen?" to "how do we control it safely and sustainably?"

Retatrutide, a triple receptor drug for GLP-1, GIP, and glucagon, is the most powerful weight loss drug yet. A significant issue is too much weight loss among the trial participants. New randomized trial results announced today with 28% body weight loss. gift link nytimes.com/2026/05/21/sci…

@sama It’s exciting and unsettling at the same time. Human intelligence built the tool but now the tool is starting to push beyond human intuition in some areas.

a general-purpose model solved a major open problem in mathematics. we'll be saying this a lot over the coming years, but this is a kinda big milestone. i'm very excited for AI to greatly extend our understanding of the world, but still, i have complicated feelings today.

@Abhishekcur The best learning happens when curiosity stops feeling like work and starts feeling personal

Learning is like a date. you can’t rush it. You need to spend real quality time with the subject, understand its stories, its behavior, its little details. at first, it feels awkward. then curiosity turns into connection. connection turns into obsession. And one day, you’re so deeply in love with the craft that the concepts start appearing soo vividly in your dreams loll. Learning will always be with us. It’s humanity’s prime karma.

@ShiningScience What stands out is that aggression and self harm can come from the same underlying brain changes, even if the behaviors look completely different externally.

New research shows that early life trauma can reshape how the brain processes pain, impulse control, and emotional reactions. The study found that trauma increases activity in a specific brain circuit that links memory and emotional regulation centers. This heightened activity makes the brain more sensitive to pain signals, which can later appear as aggressive outbursts or self harming behavior. These behaviors may look very different on the surface but arise from shared biological changes deep in the brain. The key change involves calcium channels, tiny gateways that control how strongly neurons fire. After early trauma, these channels become overactive within a pathway connecting the nucleus reuniens and the hippocampus. This causes neurons to fire too easily and too often. When this circuit becomes hyperactive, the brain reacts more intensely to stress and pain, increasing impulsive actions. Emotional pain and physical pain both feed into this same system, acting as triggers for harmful behavior patterns. The findings come from controlled animal research, allowing scientists to directly observe how trauma alters brain signaling. By identifying a shared circuit, this work explains why aggression and self harm often appear together. It also provides a clear biological framework for understanding how early experiences shape long term behavior. Research Paper 📄 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ady5540