I am so excited to share that 3 weeks ago, Grünwald Lab has officially opened its doors🥳
I couldn’t be happier or prouder, these amazing folks already have CAFs & organoids growing like it’s no biggie🤯and thanks to lots of starting aid from our new friends here
@UniklinikEssen
Usually keeping things professional around here but my heart is too full to contain it all:
Please join me in welcoming the two newest members of Grünwald Lab 🌻🌻
Sorry to miss you all at conference season this year but it's for the best possible reasons... 🤓
#HappyNerd
🎉Extremely excited to share this preprint from my post-doc work on
#PancreaticCancer
and
#TME
, where we discovered regional functional units in the PDAC TME and their specific and active roles in tumor pathobiology.
1/
Preprint!📢Got a TMA and need help mining your data? Introducing Hourglass, a computational toolkit for non-coders and coders in the digital pathology space 🔬🔧🔨
In
#PDAC
, Hourglass pinpointed sex-disparities in the IL6-associated T cell response
🩺🏥
... such a wonderful way to end an exciting day!
Thanks to my colleagues for nominating me! Honored and grateful to be working with you all every day 😊
This study and it's implications for understanding intratumoral heterogeneity as a function of tissue organization...🤯If you read nothing else this week, do read the first section of the discussion.
Huge congrats to the authors! I'm in awe.
That's actually me 🤓😆
It's been a few months now with the new lab and I've enjoyed every second of it! Thanks to my wonderful colleagues
@UniklinikEssen
and
@unidue
and my phenomenal little team 🙏
#NeuAnDerUDE
:
#Krebs
versorgt und verändert sich stetig. Dr. Barbara T. Grünwald, neue Professorin für
#Tumorheterogenit
ät und Translationale Systembiologie, beschreibt seine #Überlebensstrategie und entwickelt neuartige
#Krebstherapien
am UK Essen.
I am so very proud and honored to be part of the 'Next Generation of Scientists'. Huge THANK YOU to
@SRC_CRS
and donors for supporting my research. We're coming for you,
#PancreaticCancer
! 👩🔬🧑🔬🚀
1/2. Congratulations to Dr. Barbara Grünwald, a postdoc supervised by Dr. Rama Khoka at PMCC, for receiving a Scholarship for the Next Generation of Scientists from the Cancer Research Society! Well done! 🎉
On International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we are celebrating the powerful role that women and girls play as leaders in STEM by sharing the stories of three talented women scientists at
@pmcancercentre
➡️
Altogether, this suggests that regional variations in the
#TME
are not random but mark transitions between two fundamental microenvironmental programs that concurrently operate in
#PancreaticCancer
and make precise contributions to tumor pathobiology.
/fin
So far
#PancreaticCancer
is still outsmarting me most days tbh but we'll keep going and are most thankful for CRS' support!
Consider donating via the link in the post below.
🎖️Our researchers among the
#CancerHero
. Barbara Grünwald, researcher and recipient of our Scholarship for the Next Generation of Scientists, works daily to outsmart pancreatic cancer. Thanks to your donations, we can offer her financial support.
👉
It was a very sad departure from
@PMResearch_UHN
though…
I miss all my lovely, lovely colleagues from Khokha lab VERY much every day and I am beyond thankful to
@rmkhokha
for many things, including her incomparable (!) support during my path to independence
Now, off to new horizons! We are excited to start studying the mechanisms and translational access points of tissue self-organization in solid cancers.
The first grants are written, all fingers are crossed, and the air has never smelled better.
#NewPI
#HappyPI
Very relevant work on sex-disparities in
#PancreaticCancer
- blew my mind!! A well-know prognostic factor (TIMP1) depending almost entirely on the male population
So proud of Chris, one of my former students, for seeing data I have only looked at
#AcademicChatter
🤓
Super excited to share my 1st first-author-publication - check it out. Thanks to all co-authors. Consider sex in (pancreatic) cancer!
@SchoepsB
@BarbaraGrnwald
@JExpMed
So thrilled about this opportunity to discuss our unexpected proteomics-driven insights into regional heterogeneity in the pancreatic TME and check out
@caitsimop
's exciting work 🎊🥳. Thanks for the invite,
@CNPN_2021
!
Registeration link in quoted tweet
Picking this up one more time - such phenomenal and important work! We have also seen robust macrophage-basal associations in several datasets and I'm just so thrilled about the implications of these new mechanisms for regional, compartment-overarching heterogeneity in
#PDAC
.
During
#PancreaticCancer
Awareness Month, we are pleased to share our latest work, highlighting that the stromal TNF-α-producing macrophages promote, instead of restrain, pancreatic cancer (PDAC) aggressiveness- published today in
@NatureCancer
Happy and beyond grateful
#IGotMyVaccineAtUHN
yesterday
No side effects 👍 but a painful reminder that I nearly lost my parents to COVID19 ten months ago and many families were less lucky than mine
To everyone's loved ones getting a little safer now each day 🥂
Nice one!!!
"Our findings establish the COX-2/PGE2/EP2-4 axis as an independent immune checkpoint and a readily translatable strategy to rapidly switch the tumor inflammatory profile from cold to hot."
Intratumoral co-existence of PDAC subtypes -- what are the drivers? Talented
@LukasKlein01
summarizing the key points in a tiptop tweetorial.
What a fantastic collaboration with
@ShivKSingh6
's team!👨🔬🤝👩🔬🤩
🧬 Our new study on how "Spatial tumor immune heterogeneity facilitates subtype co-existence and therapy response via AP1 dichotomy" is out now on
@biorxivpreprint
🎉! Collaborative work of
@ShivKSingh6
and
@BarbaraGrnwald
labs 🧪 Let's dive into the key findings! 🧵
Save the date, folks! I'm really excited about this wholesome lineup of speakers. We'll cover the present and future of tissue imaging - with a protease twist of course
Registration info to come soon!
Our abstract was selected as a talk at
#AACRPAN20
!! I attended the past 2 years, never even imagining myself presenting there any time soon. It is such an honor!
My face just won't stop smiling... I am VERY excited about this work, can't wait to share😃
Very elegant work from an excellent team...🔥
Outstanding on its own but also a much appreciated continuation of several studies over the last months that aimed for an integrated understanding of epithelium and TME - with great success and gain of knowledge 🛣️🎯
So happy to share our new study, reporting the possibility to treat mesenchymal pancreatic cancer targeting both tumor and TME, published today in
@NatureCancer
.
This joint work with
@StefanieBa
is summarized in the 🧵 below 1/18
Come join us for research news on pancreatic cancer and the TME... fibroblasts, macrophages and T cells - three makes a party!
Registration link below 👇
📢February Rising Stars Speaker Series
We are proud to host three accomplished cancer research trainees presenting their work focused on pancreatic cancer!
This event is on Feb 25th, 2022 (12–1 pm).
Check more info about speakers and register here today👇
"Heterogeneity is an
indispensable foundation of tissue function, especially in cancer, and an appreciation for it is at the heart
of precision medicine approaches, which are widely considered the future of cancer treatment"
🤓🤩Having the BEST time grading this year's exam...
Great great great study, along with a tool to help get the issue sorted. A (very rare) hill I would die on: this is an extremely important consideration when working with molecular profiling data. We have seen the same numerous times in our own data
Do you use transcriptional signatures?
Do you assume they represent the same biology in pre-clinical & clinical samples?
What if I told you some of the most widely-used signatures in cancer research are being completely misinterpreted. read on👇👇🧵
Congratulations to Drs. Hansen He (
@hansenhe7
), Mark Minden and Rama Khokha (
@rmkhokha
), on receiving this year’s Mona Gauthier, Excellence in Collaboration, and Richard Hill Mentorship Awards!
Special thanks to
@AvHStiftung
. Their Feodor Lynen Program is a rare gem with a realistic notion of family needs of immigrant postdocs and allowed me to afford reliable childcare during the pandemic – the only way I could stay productive.
@AcademicChatter
@OpenAcademics
Go Foram! 🔥😀 Trainees like
@fpvyas
are what makes my job so awesome and the future of
#PancreaticCancer
a little brighter.
I was unsure what to share for Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month
#PCAM
but this is it: 💜 We have the best people in our corner
The MBP Community Outreach Fall Research Day is going on now!
@fpvyas
is currently teaching ~50 high school students about the Human Protein Atlas, gene expression, and p-values, and doing an amazing job :)
Perfect timing! Great overview over many points we saw being discussed here over the last few days!
#AACRpan22
Congratulations to the authors on a timely, wonderful, and comprehensive piece 🎉
🎉Extremely happy to share our review on the intrinsic and extrinsic factors regulating
#PDAC
subtype heterogeneity! Now at
@trendscancer
. Great time with
@ShivKSingh6
, Ellen Puré and
@LukasKlein01
putting this together 😀😀✍️
First, subTMEs differed strongly in their immune features and produced remarkable regional immune heterogeneity. Specifically, reactive subTME regions harbored complex immune cell communities and displayed all main hallmark features of an immune-hot phenotype.
/6
Because the deserted subTMEs are not really the good guys, they are just as bad but on another level: chemoprotection. The deserted phenotype, in part through direct CAF effects, was linked to poor treatment response and became further enriched during chemotherapy.
/9
Finally, applied machine learning to reactive versus deserted subTME molecular profiles and produced a new TME PHENOtyper tool which was able to project stromal histology & TME heterogeneity-related PDAC patient outcomes in public bulk RNAseq data from TCGA.
/10
I won’t lie, the last 1.5 yrs have been difficult. I am beyond grateful to my colleagues, students, and my PI
@rmkhokha
, who are authentic, smart, and kind. In all this mess, our work was a happy place, and I drew much strength from it, thank you all 🙏
Because they co-occurred intratumorally in a spatially defined manner, we named them ‘sub-tumor microenvironments’ (subTMEs). Interestingly, this co-occurrence of subTMEs - not the dominant subTME in the tumor-, was poorly prognostic.
/3
The
#PDAC
#TME
is highly heterogenous, which makes it difficult to study and to pinpoint its powerful pro- or anti-tumor functions. Yet, we found that TME heterogeneity across PDAC stages and sites originates in a surprisingly small number of well-definable tissue phenotypes.
/2
Thank you to
@CellCellPress
for excellent handling of the review process.
And, once again, big thanks to our reviewers, whoever they may be, for very constructive and intelligent feedback - it was a real treasure.
Embryonic tale of Tumorigenesis!!
Very excited to share our latest work in
@CellCellPress
on discovery of fetal-like cells in tumor microenvironment
Here is 'first-hand' glimpse of tumor time travel aka Oncofetal reprogramming of Tumor Ecosystem in HCC
SubTMEs showed vastly different molecular profiles, with ~50% of the entire proteome differentially regulated. In the subsequent gene set enrichment analyses, it became immediately clear that subTMEs are fundamentally different biological programs.
/5
It's time: the 2020 Canada Gairdner Laureate Lectures have started!
This year’s
@GairdnerAwards
recognize researchers who have contributed in different but overlapping ways to our understanding of how cells interact with each other & with their extracellular environment.
How to go from H&E slides to full 3D reconstruction of a tumor or normal tissue at single-cell resolution?
Here is the case of pancreatic tissue containing precursor lesions.
More here:
It is a good week in the
#PDAC
universe!
Another beautiful preprint, revealing a shift of PDAC subtype states after neoadjuvant treatment and lots of great
#TME
details.
Our molecular taxonomy of
#PancreaticCancer
now posted! Collaboration b/w
@BroadInstitute
@MassGeneralNews
to develop single-nucleus & spatial transcriptomics improves outcome prediction and provides new insights into mechanisms of therapy resistance.
Amazing (AMAZING!) approach to spatial (SPATIAL!) clonal evolution and related TME alterations in breast cancer. Exciting times ahead! Congratulations to all authors!
From sequencing and evolutionary theory we know that tumours grow as mosaics of clones - but so far we haven’t been able to see them.
The labs of
@Yates_lab
,
@MatsNilssonLab
and
@MoritzGerstung
created a new method to map the spatial evolution of cancers:
"Life is short, there are way too many genes, and you have a limited time"
...story of my life 😅
Great target prioritization pipeline from the Michigan team!
We are looking for an enthusiastic Lab Technician to join our Team at
@IRBBarcelona
📅 Start date: by mid Oct. Contact us ASAP
🧬 Experience in gene editing and/or in vivo cancer / immunity models🔝
☀️ Stimulating environment & Career development plan
Small thread on the key findings here, already done for the preprint:
- exiting updates since include multivariate survival analyses, additional cell populations, combination drug assays, and more details on TME shifts upon chemotherapy.
🎉Extremely excited to share this preprint from my post-doc work on
#PancreaticCancer
and
#TME
, where we discovered regional functional units in the PDAC TME and their specific and active roles in tumor pathobiology.
1/
Second, CAFs were a central element. Through subTME-specific CAF cultures for functional and single-cell analyses, we found that subTMEs were anchored in CAF differentiation states and represent organizational units for complex multi-subpopulation CAF communities.
/7
So excited that my paper is published in
@NatureComms
today! We found that The splanchnic mesenchyme is the tissue of origin for pancreatic fibroblasts during homeostasis and tumorigenesis.
#PancreaticCancer
#CAFs
@muschollings
full paper:
Today Niklas
@KrebsNi
defended his MD thesis with "summa cum laude"
@yourUMG
. Congratulations on your well-deserved success 🍾🍾 👏! We are very proud of you!
#KissingG
änselisel
Radiology meets biology - Radiomic features associated with PDAC transcriptional subtypes. A super interesting and interdisciplinary collaboration that taught me a ton.
Congratulations to all authors! 🎉
Everyone, some good news, finally.
Many more good things to come from this amazing team
@OICR
. These guys are working incredibly hard. Congratulations and thank you!
Pancreatic cancer is a personal disease. We’ve learned this to be true right down to the molecular level. 🔍
Findings from OICR's COMPASS trial have led to a new trial that aims to reduce the chances of disease recurrence, so more
#pancreaticcancer
patients become survivors.
On that recent naked mole rat paper in Nature:
SAY WHAAAT??!!! The microenvironment? 🤭😆 Again???
... as proposed 10 years ago by the fabulous Mina Bissel: why don't we get more cancer
"The systems-wide analysis of biomolecules in time and space is key to our understanding of cellular function and heterogeneity in health and disease."
This sentence made my heart beat faster. Excellent, visionary study
👇
We thus studied the functions of subTMEs individually. Using laser capture microdissection, we extracted different subTMEs and the inhabiting malignant epithelium from human PDAC tissues for parallel multiOMIC profiling (LC-MS
@KislingerThomas
lab and RNAseq
@OICRGenomics
).
/4
Discover the inequities of women in science: “how to make science itself more diverse, equitable, and open to all.” Register for the screening, taking place on May 27 7:00PM-8:30PM:
Excited and honoured to be moderating one of our first
@OICRRisingStars
events!
Registration is still open, don't miss the opportunity to chat with our superstars speakers
👇👇👇
Huge shoutout to the PM Living Biobank - outstanding colleagues and expertise, such a important asset to our study. We could not have done it without you!!!!
Join us for uncensored insights and a candid discussion on over- and underrated aspects of successful career development.
Plus: Dr. Feinberg's secret recipe for dealing with imposter syndrome! 🤫
@OICRRisingStars
@GPSN_UofT
@MBPGSA
@BESA_UofT
@UofTWSI
🚨 New paper alert!! Happy to share our story on how pancreatic cancer cells escape homeostatic suppression of the mevalonate pathway to sustain their proliferation. Thread to follow.
Uh Oh. Today the talk ... and then yesterday, I hit a submit button a full day (!) before a deadline... This can't be right, things don't work like that anymore, who's behind this???🤔😆
Please reach out if you would like to discuss and/or have any feedback on how to improve the Hourglass application! Comments/suggestions are more than welcome.
@Digi_Pathology
@DigPathologists
@DigiPathToday
Hourglass helps with exactly this: systematic & reproducible analysis of heterogeneous multiparametric datasets. After import, it transforms and subsets the data based on user specifications and produces publication-ready visualizations including pre-selected statistical tests.
@FionaWattMRC
Yes! We are huge fans too. Maybe the best part is the amazing QuPath online community, so many smart and supportive folks helping us along the way
@QuPath
🥳 🤩 So happy to share this!! Our study on pancreatic cancer (PDAC), interferon (IFN) signaling, methylation and cell-of-origin is out in Cancer Discovery!!
@CD_AACR
A long journey, with lots of learning and exciting moments
Curious? See more here👇(1/12)
First, myeloid cell counts increase with IL6 levels within patients as well as regionally.
Lymphoid cells & checkpoint molecules, however, only increased with regional IL6 levels.
Altogether, Hourglass can help expose hidden insights in complex multiparametric bioimaging datasets through a multi-layered knowledge extraction workflow. It is a tool that is easy to use and accessible to everyone, and we hope many folks will find it useful.