Hunter Shain

Grants should have page limits on letters of support. If you need more than 3 pages (1 page per letter x 3 letters), then maybe you should not be leading the grant.

Immune evasion through mitochondrial transfer in the tumour microenvironment - Nature Mitochondria with mutations in their DNA from cancer cells can be transferred to T cells in the tumour microenvironment, which leads to T cell dysfunction and impaired antitumour immunity.

I am just reading this paper, and it is absolutely wild. Tumor cells acquire mutations in mitochondria, and then transfer them to T-cells, and the mutant mitochondria drives dysfunction in the T-cells?! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Spatial omics at the forefront: emerging technologies, analytical innovations, and clinical applications Liu et al. review how spatial omics technologies reveal the organization, interaction, and evolution of tumor cells and their microenvironment within tissues. They highlight analytical advances that t...

Recent review from HTAN. Linghua Wang with a timely review on spatial omic technologies Cancer Cell. www.cell.com/cancer-cell/...

Cellular neighborhoods in cancer - Nature Cancer Tan and colleagues discuss recent advances in spatial omics and computational models that inform the classification and clinical relevance of cellular neighborhoods in cancer.

A new perspective is out by Kai Tan and Lichun Ma from the Human Tumor Atlas Network discussing the emerging concept of the cellular neighborhood. www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Keaton Wagler with the best college basketball game of the year and ESPN doesn’t even have a picture.

A new preprint from the lab, with postdoc @deboraycb.bsky.social and collaborators @aidaandres.bsky.social and Tim Connallon:

“Characterising the detectable and invisible fractions of genomic loci under balancing selection”
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Thinking about the soft money problem in science. My institution will send 100 emails to faculty list serves guilt tripping someone to volunteer to teach before offering a dime of compensation.

My take so far is that Universities need more skin in the game to reduce churn. Fewer soft positions. Thoughtful reductions in indirect reimbursement (not an overnight slash to 15%). Give them an incentive to support scientists long-term instead of treating scientists like a source of govt. revenue

As much as I agree that administrative bloat is an issue, my hot take is that reducing administrative bloat to apply for a grant = more churn introduced into the system. AI is already helping to offset administrative burden and increasing apps/person. Larger systematic changes are needed

He acknowledges administrative bloat, and when asked the top issue, he says regulations around human subjects research. I could not agree more. This has stymied so much of my work

What’s Wrong with NIH Grants? “Science is fundamentally different than remodeling a kitchen”

Reading the Mike Lauer interview. A very informative take from an insider on the state of NIH. www.statecraft.pub/p/whats-wron...

patrick star from spongebob squarepants with his hands folded ALT: patrick star from spongebob squarepants with his hands folded

Likewise, Congressman Cole from Oklahoma is the chair of the overall House Appropriations committee.

If you can, reach out to his office as well.

It is noteworthy that OMB is willing to veto a bill over a minor-seeming NIH operational issue.

This makes me think this is part of a bigger plan...

The Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis trade looked bad from the get-go for the Mavericks, and it is aging even worse.

I think I have reached the point in my career where I have reviewed more grants than I have had grants reviewed.

I get the sense that most reviewers read in alphabetical order. I try to randomize my pile to help break up the patterns a bit.

Or as another e.g. when you read a spectacular grant (in either direction), this might influence your take on the next grant (is it possible that the 2 best grants in the pile could be in a row or do you give that second grant a worse score?!)

This is probably overkill, but when reviewing grants, I randomize the order in which I read them. I worry that order matters. E.g. for the first grant, you do not have an overall sense of the quality and possibly err on the side of an average score.

We (U.S. citizens) literally pay the tariffs. I bought something from Etsy from an international seller. UPS guy came to my door holding the package and gave me two options. 1. Write a check to UPS for the tariff or 2. refuse delivery and send it back.

ucsf tanning bed

Great to see research on tanning bed and cancer risk from @bishaltandukar.bsky.social @shainlab.bsky.social on today’s @ucsanfrancisco.bsky.social Town Hall www.ucsf.edu/news/2025/12... #UCSFCancerProud

You should add @timkawakami.bsky.social to this list

I know for me sports talk was the only thing I missed about Twitter until I found this list.

If you're missing having NFL memes and analysis in your feed in-between the politics and whatever reason you made a Bluesky account in the first place, Mina has an A+ list of peeps to follow.

Also thank you to funders at the National Cancer Institute, NIAMS, DOD, and @melanomaresearch.bsky.social

Thank you to @bishaltandukar.bsky.social and Pedram Gerami (co-first authors) and the many others who contributed. @delahnydeivendran.bsky.social @sharmaharsh.bsky.social among many others not on Blue Sky

It’s been encouraging to see this work resonate beyond the scientific community.

📰 The Daily Telegraph covered our findings and their public-health implications here:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12...

#PublicHealth #ScienceCommunication

Molecular effects of indoor tanning The skin cells of tanning bed users have distinct mutational features as compared to people who only experience natural sunlight.

Proud to share our new paper in Science Advances.

We show that indoor tanning beds cause widespread mutational damage across the skin to increase melanoma risk, especially in body sites that rarely see sunlight.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#Melanoma #SkinCancer

Hitting 1800 elo in style with a smothered mate!

More details in our new work:
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Persistence = more time to accumulate mutations.
Higher mutation rates = higher odds of eventually hitting a growth-promoting driver mutation.
That’s how these early lesions quietly set the stage for full tumor evolution.

My hypothesis: these early mutations blunt the cell’s ability to undergo apoptosis or repair UV-induced DNA damage.
In a UV-rich environment, such impaired cells simply persist longer.

So what are these early mutations doing?
They appear to create a mutator phenotype.
Keratinocytes with TP53 or NOTCH-pathway mutations carry ~10× more mutations than nearby cells without them.