Weston Anderson

This Year’s Medicine Nobel Goes to Discovery of Why the Body Doesn’t Attack Itself Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi shared the Nobel prize for their work on peripheral immune tolerance, a process that is key to organ transplants and treatment of autoimmune disease...

If you want to understand why 3 scientists got the Nobel Prize in Medicine today for discovering what keeps our immune systems from running amok--and how that keeps you healthy-- read this @laurenjyoung.bsky.social story:
www.scientificamerican.com/article/2025... #medsky 🧪

One sentence summary: A documentary crew follows a group of vampire guys around as they navigate the ups and downs of male friendship.

It's pretty cute. I give it a vampires vs. werewolves out of ten. #filmsky

Movie poster for What we do in the Shadows (2014)

#currentlywatching Tonight's #spooktober movie, What we do in the Shadows (2014) directed by Jamaine Clement and Taika Waititi. #filmsky

A picture of me holding a physical copy of my spooktober 2025 movie calender.

By the way, this #spooktober movie calender prints out pretty nice on tabloid paper. #watchlist #filmsky

This movie was a wild ride. Rarely has a film made me feel so uncomfortable.

One sentence summary: A mysterious killer sadistically kills off abusive adults and kid bullies at a summer camp.

I give it queer revenge fantasy?! Out of ten. #filmsky

It's SLASHERDAY!
Tonight we are watching Sleepaway Camp (1983) directed by Robert Hilzik. #filmsky

#filmsky

One sentence summary: After a disfiguring car accident, a young women endures multiple surgeries under the care of her physician father in his deranged quest to make her beautiful again.

Full of striking imagery that sticks with you. I give it an uncanny silicone mask out of 10 👁👄👁 #filmsky

Movie poster for Eyes Without a Face.

📽 Tonight's #spooktober movie is Eyes Without a Face (1960) directed by Georges Franju.

Thank you for adding this context! 😁 It's so important to talk about the limitations of research. I should mention that the human studies from this lab come from populations of mostly urban white women in America. So, the findings can't necessarily be generalized to the global population.

These are gorgeous 😍

🧪All the research I shared with you today comes from the laboratory of Pepper Schedin. I had the pleasure of working in the Schedin lab for ~4 years. Check out this link to learn more about their amazing work: www.ohsu.edu/school-of-me...

I know I said I was going to cover changes in the liver, but I think that will have to wait for a future thread. This one has already gotten rather long 😅

🧪This type of research matters! When we understand more about how breast cancer starts, we learn more about how to prevent it.

🧪So, if you are pregnant should you take ibuprofen to prevent breast cancer? It is too soon to say. There haven't been any clinical trials showing this type of prevention is safe and effective. But the research is encouraging!

🧪This suggests that it's possible to prevent breast cancers that occur after pregnancy with short-term, low-dose ibuprofen (Advil)! This is an amazing finding because ibuprofen is already approved as safe in pregnant and breast-feeding women.

Ibuprofen supports macrophage differentiation, T cell recruitment, and tumor suppression in a model of postpartum breast cancer Background Women diagnosed with breast cancer within 5 years postpartum (PPBC) have poorer prognosis than age matched nulliparous women, even after controlling for clinical variables known to impact d...

🧪In rodents, low-dose ibuprophen (generic Advil) can reverse the tumor-promotional inflammation that happens after weaning. And, all without causing negative side effects!
jitc.bmj.com/content/6/1/98

🧪So, weaning after pregnancy causes inflammation in the breast that can promote cancer risk. What do we do about it? The research is still in early stages, but scientists believe that a lot of cancers related to pregnancy and weaning could be prevented.

🧪Okay, but here is our eureka moment! One reason why breast cancer risk spikes in the first 5-10 years after childbirth is that inflammation after weaning can promote cancer growth and aggressiveness!

Remodeling of the mammary microenvironment after lactation promotes breast tumor cell metastasis - PubMed The mammary gland microenvironment during postlactational involution shares similarities with inflammation, including high matrix metalloproteinase activity, fibrillar collagen deposition, and release...

🧪It turns out all this immune activity (inflammation) in the breast after weaning isn't great news for breast cancer. Evidence from rodent models shows that weaning-induced involution can promote cancer cells to be more aggressive: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16436674/

A figure showing immune cell infiltration of rodent breast tissue during involution but not in virgin rodents. From Schedin, P., O’Brien, J., Rudolph, M. et al. Microenvironment of the Involuting Mammary Gland Mediates Mammary Cancer Progression. J Mammary Gland Biol Neoplasia 12, 71–82 (2007). https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1007/s10911-007-9039-3

🧪Here is a nifty little figure showing all these killer immune cells in rodent breast tissue. All those reddish brown spots are immune cells. We see them in rodents after they wean (involution) not in virgin rodents.

🧪This process is called "weaning-induced mammary gland involution" and it is metal af. All those milk-producing cells aren't needed anymore, so the immune system swoops in and kills them off. It is a dramatic but totally normal process that also happens to be extremely inflammatory.

Characterization of weaning-induced breast involution in women: implications for young women’s breast cancer npj Breast Cancer - Characterization of weaning-induced breast involution in women: implications for young women’s breast cancer

🧪This process where the breast tissue returns to a non-milk-producing state after weaning is called "weaning induced involution". You can read more about this process in humans in this article: rdcu.be/eJmPU

🧪After weaning, all those new milk-producing cells aren't needed anymore. So, the breast changes again. You can see this change starting at 1-month post-wean: almost all those white spaces full of milk are gone. By 12-months, the breast looks like it did before pregnancy.

A figure showing representative images of breast tissue across a pregnancy-lactation-weaning cycle. From Jindal, S., Narasimhan, J., Borges, V.F. et al. Characterization of weaning-induced breast involution in women: implications for young women’s breast cancer. npj Breast Cancer 6, 55 (2020).

🧪You can see these changes with the help of a microscope. See how different the breast tissue looks before pregnancy (nulliparious) and during lactation? All those white spaces are new epithelial cells that are full of milk.

🧪 During pregnancy, the the breast undergoes enormous changes to prepare for milk production. This is a process similar to a growth spurt: all the sudden there is just a lot of new cells in the breast. These cells are called mammary epithelial cells, and their job is to make milk.

🧪 There are two main changes that I want to talk about: changes to the breasts and changes to the liver. I'm going to talk about changes that happen in the breast first.

🧪To understand why pregnancy has a duel-effect with breast cancer risk, we have to understand what's going on in the body during and after pregnancy. And the answer is A LOT of stuff is going on. #Pregnancy is an amazing biological phenomenon!

A graph showing a transient increase in breast cancer incidence in the first 5-10 years after childbirth, followed by lower lifetime-risk ~22 years after childbirth.

🧪 Scientists have learned that pregnancy has a "duel effect" when it comes to #breastcancer risk. Many people think pregnancy lowers breast cancer risk. And it does—eventually. But right after pregnancy, the risk actually goes up. www.nature.com/articles/nrc...

🧪 You've probably heard that the risk of getting breast cancer is related to age and genetics. Did you know that childbirth also plays an important role in breast cancer risk? Scientists are uncovering why, and the reason has to do with how the body changes during pregnancy and lactation 🧵