Pépin Lab

Well done Josephine! Talk about multitalented…

The SRB, SRF and SSR have announced that A/Prof. David Pépin of the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School is the 2025 Recipient of the RV Short Medal and Lecture.

A/Prof. Pépin has made significant contributions to understanding the role of AMH in fertility.

We're looking for a Postdoctoral Fellow in Machine Learning & Women’s Health in partnership with MIT’s Female Medicine through Machine Learning (FMML fmml.mit.edu ) to build multi-modal ML models related to ovarian aging and its impact on overall health using large, real-world datasets.

This is incredible.

‘One of the darkest days’: NIH purges agency leadership amid mass layoffs In shock move, four institute directors at the US biomedical agency are removed from their posts.

Director of the Nat'l Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) was summarily dismissed yesterday. So here's your reminder that birth defects kill twice as many American kids as cancer. But there is no St. Jude's for birth defects. Only the NICHD.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

So proud of our brilliant PhD student Alana Mermin-Bunnell, and thankful for all her work to implement a machine learning follicle counting pipeline.

Oxidation of retromer complex controls mitochondrial translation - Nature Systematic base-editing and computational screens identify specific cysteine residues on VPS35 in the retromer complex as key sensors that decrease mitochondrial translation in response to reactive ox...

I’m excited to share the latest work from our lab, led by a group of three amazing scientists: Junbing Zhang, Yousuf Ali and Harrison Chong, who describe @nature the discovery of a ROS sensor, VPS35, which links cytosolic H2O2 levels to regulation of mitochondrial translation and

Universities aren't doing enough to come to each others' defense, and industry isn't standing up for academia, says @hollylynchez.bsky.social:

The Real Goal of Trump's War on Universities It isn't about stopping antisemitism. It's about power.

A great summary on the war against academia and the root of the rising anti-intellectualism open.substack.com/pub/paulwald...

Contribution of vaccination to improved survival and health: modelling 50 years of the Expanded Programme on Immunization Since 1974 substantial gains in childhood survival have occurred in every global region. We estimate that EPI has provided the single greatest contribution to improved infant survival over the past 50...

Nothing will kill more children than the ongoing decimation of CDC, NIH, and USAID work to lift vaccine uptake in the US and world.

Child survival rose 75% in the last 50 years. Vaccines account for 40% of that. Measles vax alone was 60% of the benefit. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

The House of Representatives just passed a CR that includes devastating cuts to the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP) – 57% cut.
It is absolutely critical that we reach out to our Senators now and urge them NOT to include these cuts.
Call them!

2025 Study section tracking

This is a useful resource if you’re trying to keep track of NIH study section meetings, a google doc kept up to date by Dr Barber. docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

You know it’s bad when the scientists go outside.

For those in the Boston area, the stand up for science demonstration will be at the capitol this Friday 3/7 12-4. i0.wp.com/standupforsc...

a cartoon of homer simpson holding a card ALT: a cartoon of homer simpson holding a card

I am not going to call this a Bluetorial, because I do not want to sully that term (which, at least I, find joyful).

Let’s call it a Orwellial.

NIH ban on renewing senior scientists adds to assaults on its in-house research Policy follows firings of tenure-track scientists and suspension of training programs

Senior investigators are now on the chopping block. We could all suffer the same fate if we can’t unite to stop the willful dismantling of scientific research. www.science.org/content/arti...

If you are worried about science there IS something that you can do! Join us next Friday in DC to make your voice heard. Come and stand up for science! Show that science is for everyone. I’ll be there and I can’t wait to see you there too!
@standupforscience.bsky.social

Medical research funding is usually both public (NIH) and private (pharma), i.e. the TV drug ads

Preterm birth & preeclampsia research is almost entirely non-industry

Most pharmaceutical companies avoid pregnant patients like the plague.

So freezing NIH essentially freezes our field
#MedSky

Get ready to #standupforscience in 2.5 weeks!

22 states sue to block Trump administration cuts to NIH research payments Attorneys general sued the Trump administration to block a NIH decision that would slash grant payments for research overhead

#BREAKING - 22 states sue to block Trump administration cuts to NIH research payments

NIH plans to slash support for indirect research costs, sending shockwaves through science The NIH said Friday night that it would slash support for indirect costs on all existing and future grants to 15%

#BREAKING - NIH plans to slash support for indirect research costs, sending shockwaves through science

It’s definitely over for those of us doing research at hospitals.

The Ovarian Cancer Research Syndicate schedule is out from the @pennmedicine.bsky.social Ovarian Cancer Research Center. Great line up!

Congrats to Dr Godin who did a great job presenting our work on cat contraception at #Fertility2025. We’ve shown that we can treat kittens with AMH gene therapy before puberty and they will be contracepted at maturity with no adverse effects on hormones! Finally, a non-surgical alternative for pets.

You should leave an elf on the shelf there!

Next: we hope to develop therapies to neutralize FSTL3 to potentiate ICB and see if FSTL3 can be a clinically useful blood biomarker in patients with ovarian cancer. We thank the patients, collaborators at #INSERM and at the Whitehead and funding from MGH, MIT-Bridge, and the DoD.

We found that overexpressing FSTL3 in our syngeneic model made the tumors grow faster, promoted a more mesenchymal cancer phenotype, increased myCAF abundance and fibrosis in the TME, and reduced T cell infiltration. 6/n

By examining our mouse models, the TCGA, and our own bank of ascites samples, we found that FSTL3 overexpression was quite common in OVCA, and a very clear prognostic biomarker of shorter overall survival. We could also detect it in the serum of mice, where it tracked with tumor burden. 5/n

This made us wonder if other TGFb superfamily ligand binders/suppressors might also play a role in OVCA immunotherapy resistance. The closest homolog, FSTL3, binds the same ligands activinA and GDF8. And overexpressing it in the FSTKO rescued resistance. 4/n

One combination what was particularly effective in CCNE1-amplified tumors was a combination of anti-PDL1/anti-CTLA4/perxasertib. But some clones would be cured and others were resistant to treatment. We traced it to follistatin: knocking it out restored sensitivity. 3/n