Joanna Groom

Point of no returns: researchers are crossing a threshold in the fight for funding With so little money to go round, the costs of competing for grants can exceed what the grants are worth. When that happens, nobody wins.

The Szilard Point is not some theoretical event horizon. It is where we are at right now. When the total cost of competing for a grant exceeds the value of available funding the system is seriously broken. We need innovative granting schemes and solutions not more of the same hunger games.

Its hard to imagine our current grant systems surviving their own peer review processes, maybe that's a good starting point 🤔

Everyone's tags: @brigetteduckworth.bsky.social @benjbroom.bsky.social @raymondqin.bsky.social @taylahjbennett.bsky.social @chinweetan.bsky.social

@brigetteduckworth.bsky.social @benjbroom.bsky.social @raymondqin.bsky.social @taylahjbennett.bsky.social @chinweetan.bsky.social

Hey "Friends"

The 2025 edition of our #AwkwardLabPhoto celebrates an incredible year of growth, publications, promotions, PhD submissions and grads

I feel immensely proud and grateful to be part of this team

🎉🥂 our @jem.org paper “Transient inhibition of type I interferon enhances CD8+ T cell stemness and vaccine protection” is in the 2025 Best of JEM collection

This work was led by @benjbroom.bsky.social @wehi-research.bsky.social

check out the original thread..
bsky.app/profile/groo...

Also with @taylahjbennett.bsky.social now on bsky!

Fantastic to wrap up the year with a lab retreat at CERES East Brunswick:
Celebrating some nice wins in 2025 and setting us up for 2026 and beyond
@wehi-research.bsky.social @benjbroom.bsky.social @brigetteduckworth.bsky.social @raymondqin.bsky.social @chinweetan.bsky.social

2025 lab photo shoot has happened! While we're deciding on the final cut, flash back to last years entry.

Is anyone else is up for the #AwkwardLabPhoto challenge... or is this just an "us" thing 🤷‍♀️

Cytokines 2026 in Glasgow (Oct 18-21) has an incredible Scientific Organizing Committee! Simon Jones, Iain McInnes, Clare Bryant, Clare Lloyd, and Luke O'Neill creating the program. This one's going to be special.

Details: 2026.cytokinesociety.org

Another fantastic @ASI annual meeting, with @benjbroom.bsky.social (New Investigator finalist) and @brigetteduckworth.bsky.social (Symposia session) sharing the latest work from our lab.

Loved catching up with old friends and hearing the current research from this brilliant network.

Jacques Miller?

“It started by taking a thymus out of a mouse,” said Jo Handelsman, the director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Who would have thought that would be an exciting idea for the future of medicine?”

Thanks @10xgenomics.bsky.social for the shout out and for making your data publicly available

Why waste precious resources ($$) to reinvent data that already exists? Cool human datasets ready to go

(Although now we have scratched the spatial itch, we may need to do more @chinweetan.bsky.social 🤔)

Today is the last day to make a submission! You don't have to fill in the survey l, you can just upload a letter or even a video

🫵🏻Advocate for fundamental research👊🏻

@nhmrc.bsky.social need your feedback to develop the best strategy for the future of Australian medical research

Link in the 🧵

Dear Everyone, I've read the #NHMRC draft strategy and I have notes ...

So I'm going to...🧵🤔🧵😱🧵😵‍💫🧵🙏🧵🧵🧵
This is a repost from X because you all need to know!

#NHMRCdraftStratergy #Ihavenotes #ValueFundamentalScience

@nhmrc.bsky.social

Thrilled to make the cover of @natimmunol.nature.com this month.

A version of this warhol-inspired image has been in my head almost since we first conceived this Tfh diversity project (many, many years ago) @wehi-research.bsky.social

TFH cell programs by pathogen and species - Nature Immunology CD4+ T follicular helper (TFH) cells that develop in response to a range of pathogens share aspects of a common gene signature. However, cytokine environments, rather than pathogen class, shape diversity in programming potential.

"Biology is messy and sometimes we need to embrace the mess"
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Huge thanks to Amy Weinmann and Danielle Chisolm for beautifully highlighting our work and the importance of our approaches @natimmunol.nature.com

Yellow Tfh cells activate magenta B cells to produce protective antibodies during parasite infection.

WEHI scientists led by @groomlab.bsky.social‬ @chinweetan.bsky.social map how Tfh cells tailor instructions based on infection type. A step toward smarter vaccines and therapies.

📄 In @natimmunol.nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🔗 Read more: www.wehi.edu.au/news/unlocki...

This entire project is intertwined with the influence of cytokines to specify Tfh phenotype differentiation and to modify their function.
Ill be presenting this (and some unpublished work) at the @cytokinesociety.bsky.social meeting 2025 in Seattle in November.

International PhD Scholar Initiative Our International PhD Scholar Initiative enables outstanding international students to join WEHI's Medical Biology PhD Program.

Generating this Resource has initiated multiple new projects in the lab.
If you are interested in joining us, please reach out.
@wehi-research.bsky.social International PhD Scholarships are now open.

This was a massive collaborative effort based on our local ASI network including @kimljacobson.bsky.social @niclag.bsky.social @coopernatant.bsky.social @katherinekedz.bsky.social @jenjuno.viralvaxlab.com @cvandesandt.bsky.social @amania001.bsky.social (these are all i can find 🦋). Huge thanks 🙌

Combined this Resource provides new ways to:
🌟Assess the impact of route, affinity, dose on Tfh function
🌟Investigate Tfh phenotype plasticity
🌟Direct B cell responses for vaccines against a diverse range of pathogens
🌟Unlock avenues to understand and treat antibody-mediated diseases

Further, we identified new cell surface markers to explore these phenotypes across lymphoid tissues and blood with @katherinekedz.bsky.social and with @jenjuno.viralvaxlab.com in an antigen-specific manner, using longitudinal infected or vaccine cohorts.

Next, with Vanessa Bryant (no 🦋), we performed CITE-seq on human tonsil Tfh scRNAseq. This showed that our mouse signatures overlayed with distinct human Tfh clusters.

We found these cytokines act as levers of Tfh phenotypes, beyond Th1-Tfh bifurcation. Highlighting separate transcriptional modules to instruct Tfh cell identity and functional branching. The latter being instructed by cytokines and overlayed by lineage-defining factors to instruct B cell responses.

We next established Tfh-pathogen specific signatures which indicated distinct transcriptional programs, functional potential and highlighted unique cytokine signaling profiles.

This suggested cytokine pathways are a stronger driver of specific heterogeneous Tfh cell phenotypes than pathogen class.

We then performed bulk RNAseq to profile IL21+, and IL21- Tfh cells, T follicular regulatory cells, and T effector cells from each infection.

This allowed us to establish a core Tfh signature that is conserved regardless of pathogen type.

First, we established that each infection established distinct Tfh populations and, with @kimljacobson.bsky.social, tailor distinct B cell responses.

Here, we expand this to investigate how distinct programing is established during diverse challenges, comparing viral, helminth, and bacterial infections.

We hypothesized that pathogen-specific cues result in functionally distinct Tfh phenotypes with the capacity to tailor B cell responses.

Context-Dependent Role for T-bet in T Follicular Helper Differentiation and Germinal Center Function following Viral Infection Shiekh et al. show that, in influenza and LCMV infections, the role of the transcription factor T-bet in TFH differentiation is contingent on environmental cues, IL-2 signaling, and T cell competition...

Previously we established that context-dependent transcriptional programing exists for Tfh induced during viral infections @amania001.bsky.social
www.cell.com/cell-reports...

CD4+ T follicular helper (Tfh) cells display remarkable functional flexibility, directing B cell responses during vaccination and all pathogen classes and being implicated during inflammatory and antibody-mediated diseases.

Check out the Tfh “circle of influence” from @profshanecrotty.bsky.social