Angelo D’Alessandro

Cover - Transfusion Today - October 2025

The October 2025 issue of Transfusion Today is out now!

Discover how developments in Big Data are progressing the field of transfusion medicine by diving into the latest issue of Transfusion Today!

🔗 Read the full issue here: isbtweb.foleon.com/transfusion-...

#TransfusionToday

Thank you, Thomas!

A cGAS-mediated mechanism in naked mole-rats potentiates DNA repair and delays aging Efficient DNA repair might make possible the longevity of naked mole-rats. However, whether they have distinctive mechanisms to optimize functions of DNA repair suppressors is unclear. We find that na...

A cGAS-mediated mechanism in naked mole-rats potentiates DNA repair and delays aging | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Reprogramming neuroblastoma by diet-enhanced polyamine depletion - Nature Enhanced polyamine depletion in neuroblastoma models decreases translation of mRNA codons with adenosine in the third position, reprogramming the tumour proteome away from cell cycle progression and towards differentiation.

Reprogramming neuroblastoma by diet-enhanced polyamine depletion

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Tissue transglutaminase drives fibrin β-chain cross-linking: a novel fibrin modification observed in trauma patients Key Points. Trauma patient plasma clots feature entirely novel fibrin β-chain crosslinking not evident in healthy controlsFibrin β-chain crosslinks evident

Elegant work from Kirk Hansen’s lab @cuanschutz.bsky.social Transglutaminase 2 (likely from RBCs) contributes to forming fibrin beta cross-links, even in the absence of FXIII. TG2 increases in plasma in trauma patients with higher injury severity score.

ashpublications.org/blood/articl...

BDH2-driven lysosome-to-mitochondria iron transfer shapes ferroptosis vulnerability of the melanoma cell states - Nature Metabolism Rizzollo et al. show that BDH2 participates in iron distribution between cellular compartments, which sets the threshold for the ferroptosis vulnerability of the melanoma cell phenotypes, ultimately a...

BDH2-driven lysosome-to-mitochondria iron transfer shapes ferroptosis vulnerability of the melanoma cell states

doi.org/10.1038/s422...

Patients with SCD transfused with blood stored >30 days have higher iron, cytokines, hemolysis, hypoxia and inflammation markers compared to recipients of RBCs stored <10 days. Metabolites in the bag impact in vivo metabolism (hypoxanthine —> urate). Kudos to Matt Karafin for this clinical trial

Congratulations!

Another great one from the @cjoneslab.bsky.social !

Study Reveals Caffeine May Undermine Blood Transfusion Effectiveness Study Reveals Caffeine May Undermine Blood Transfusion Effectiveness

Blood donors, like 67% of adult Americans, drink a lot of coffee. However, caffeine may reduce quality of stored RBCs by (i) inhibiting G6PD (~40%); (ii) antagonizing ADORA2b. Likely relevant beyond blood transfusion!

Paper: haematologica.org/haematologic...

news.cuanschutz.edu/news-stories...

Evidence that mitochondria in macrophages are destroyed by microautophagy - Nature Communications Mitophagy, the selective degradation of mitochondria, has been thought to occur via macroautophagy. Here, the authors present data indicating that microautophagy also mediates mitophagy in macrophages...

Evidence that mitochondria in macrophages are destroyed by microautophagy
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Upper - cryo-EM reconstruction of stomatin AQP1 complex. Lower - reconstruction of stomatin-UT-B complex.

Happy to share a new preprint from the Clarke & Vallese (@fravallese.bsky.social) labs reporting #cryoem structures of two RBC stomatin complexes – with AQP1 & UT-B - continuing the SPFH theme from our recent vault preprint! This was a fun one and has been cooking for a while - read on for more! ⬇️

Great job Pavel and team! Thanks for the inclusion

As always, this is a team effort, led by Daniel Stephenson, Greg Keele @grkeele.bsky.social and Grier Page @rti.bsky.social, experts in ferroptosis @brentstockwell.bsky.social - blood storage and transfusion medicine - from the Zimring lab at UVA, Vitalant Research Institute, UCSF

GPX4 regulates lipid peroxidation and ferroptosis of stored red blood cells Red blood cell (RBC) membrane lipid peroxidation during blood bank storage profoundly impacts transfusion efficacy; however, the genetic determinants …

Iron-loaded Red Blood Cells undergo a lipid peroxidation process akin to ferroptosis during storage in the blood bank. We now show that they also harbor a functional GPX4, and common SNPs, genetic or pharmacological manipulation impact transfusion outcomes www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

From Articles to Code: On-Demand Generation of Core Algorithms from Scientific Publications Maintaining software packages imposes significant costs due to dependency management, bug fixes, and versioning. We show that rich method descriptions in scientific publications can serve as standalon...

Stop 👏 building 👏 python/R👏 packages!

we show that well described methods in academic papers can serve as the specification for an LLM to create methods on demand. This can serve to reduce package maintenance while ensuring accessibility in any programming language

arxiv.org/abs/2507.22324

Great work James, Mercedes and teams!

Respiratory Viruses Can Wake Up Breast Cancer Cells in Lungs Respiratory Viruses Can Wake Up Breast Cancer Cells in Lungs

Researchers at #CUAnschutz, @einsteinmededu.bsky.social and @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social have found the first direct evidence that common respiratory infections, including #COVID-19, can awaken dormant #breastcancer cells that have spread to the lungs, setting the stage for new metastatic tumors.

Really cool! Heme catabolism and biliverdin/bilirubin steps are NADPH dependent, and G6PD deficiency may protect from malaria. I wonder if/how the two stories line up

Really cool!

Does it track with hemoglobin levels? HBB C93 and glutathione seem to track at a 1:1 ratio in humans and mice.
They used 13C 15N-glycine in vivo, it would be interesting to see how GSH synthesis rates track with de novo heme synthesis

A free version just posted—courtesy of #Nature.
Lipidomics (via #XCMS / #METLIN) reveals α-tocopherol (vitamin E) as a key player in ferroptosis resistance in cancer.

t.co/HMJSLuTAnM

#Lipidomics #CancerResearch #Ferroptosis #VitaminE

So nice to finally associate a face and person to the names and papers, especially when it turns out to be such a lovely company! Thank you for the evening!

Single-cell RNA sequencing data are often used as indirect estimates of protein abundance in single cells.

Instead, I think the goal should be to use the consistent discrepancies to understand regulatory mechanisms.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Always great to catch up with friends and colleagues around the world, while sharing the latest stories with the transfusion medicine community at #ISBTMILAN!

Delighted to have our work on Polygenic Modifiers of #TelomereBiologyDisorders, led by Michael Poeschla, @sashagusevposts.bsky.social, @mitchiela.bsky.social, @sharonsavage.bsky.social, @tummalalab.bsky.social, + co, published in @jclinical-invest.bsky.social today: www.jci.org/articles/vie...

hu.MAP3.0: atlas of human protein complexes by integration of >25,000 proteomic experiments | Molecular Systems Biology imageimagehu.MAP3.0 integrates mass spectrometry experiments to identify human protein complexes. Using this resource, this study characterizes covariation of complexes, identifies mutually exclusive ...

Very excited that our work describing hu.MAP3.0 is published in @molsystbiol.org. Here we use machine learning to integrate >25k mass spectrometry experiments to place ~70% of human proteins into 15k protein complexes.

www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

Love it!

Taurine from tumour niche drives glycolysis to promote leukaemogenesis - Nature The taurine–taurine transporter axis is a critical dependency of aggressive myeloid leukaemias.

Taurine from tumour niche drives glycolysis to promote leukaemogenesis

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Professional Self: The Enemy Inside

I'd like to share this short piece on a topic I hope you will find useful. It is the result of a personl journey and many discussions with friends and peers. Let me know your thoughts.

network.febs.org/posts/the-pr...