Miranda Leung

WHO says the antibacterial pipeline reveals a dual crisis: scarcity and lack of innovation A new report finds there are fewer antibacterial medicines in clinical pipelines than just two years ago and relatively few qualify as innovative.

WHO says the antibacterial pipeline reveals a dual crisis: scarcity and lack of innovation: The number of medicines under development has fallen, and relatively few have been deemed innovative. www.statnews.com/pharmalot/20... via @statnews.com

Prompt-based bioinformatics: a new interface for multi-omics analysis

#AI #bioinfo #multiomics 🧪

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

I just packed Narcan for my daughter’s dorm room. Public health made it possible Narcan didn’t just magically show up on pharmacy shelves. It exists because people made it happen.

First Opinion - By Elizabeth Métraux: I just packed Narcan for my daughter’s dorm room. Public health made it possible - Narcan exists because of work that is now being defunded www.statnews.com/2025/08/11/p... via @statnews.com

Why do ageing rates vary by country? Massive study says politics play a part Social inequality and the decay of democratic institutions are linked to accelerated ageing — but education seems to slow the process.

Social inequality and weak democratic institutions are linked to faster ageing

go.nature.com/44KplEp

Mycobacterium tuberculosis biology, pathogenicity and interaction with the host Nature Reviews Microbiology - In this Review, Warner, Barczak, Gutierrez and Mizrahi explore essential aspects of Mycobacterium tuberculosis physiology and biology, present recent advances related...

💥 Very excited to share this review in Nature Reviews Microbiology.
Contributing to this review with Val, Digby and Amy was an enlightening experience! Hope people in the community find it useful- we managed to cite around 200 papers...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Theme — International Open Access Week

“Who Owns Our Knowledge?” is the theme for this year’s International Open Access Week. The 2025 theme asks a pointed question about the present moment and how, in a time of disruption, communities can reassert control over the knowledge they produce #OAweek www.openaccessweek.org/theme

The Spatial Atlas of Human Anatomy (SAHA): A Multimodal Subcellular-Resolution Reference Across Human Organs

Incredible levels of spatial definition of human anatomy (at steady state)

"...the largest subcellular resolution, multimodal transcriptomic and proteomic dataset of healthy human tissues to date...".

#ImmunoSky 🧪
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Life from death: ethical implications of uterus transplantation from deceased donors in global health In 2018, The Lancet reported that Brazilian researchers had successfully performed a groundbreaking uterus transplantation (UTx) from a deceased donor, leading to the birth of a healthy baby. This pro...

Life from death: ethical implications of uterus transplantation from deceased donors in global health - Halina Suwalowska, Michael Parker, Adamu Addissie, Joseph Ali et al. | BMJ Global Health gh.bmj.com/content/10/6...

These scientists re-enacted Stone-Age voyage to Japan’s remotest islands Experiment shows how dugout canoes could have crossed treacherous straits from Taiwan to the Ryukyu Islands.

In a detailed reenactment of the perilous journey, a team demonstrated how palaeolithic people could have travelled huge distances with the tools, techniques and navigational skills available at the time

https://go.nature.com/4k7UNC8

YouTube video by European Bioinformatics Institute - EMBL-EBI The Human Genome Project at 20 - interview with Ewan Birney

The first draft of the human genome turns 25 today! 🎂

On 26 June 2000, the UK & US announced the first full map of the 3 billion DNA base pairs that make us human.

🌍 A milestone for humanity, powered by global collaboration.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnWA...

#HumanGenome #ScienceHistory 🖥️🧬

Medical AI can transform medicine — but only if we carefully track the data it touches The uncontrolled deployment of machine learning in medicine can distort patient information and sacrifice long-term data reliability for short-term benefits.

Although machine learning could transform medicine, uncontrolled deployment risks trading long-term reliability for short-term benefits

https://go.nature.com/447yqXK

Sure, let's accelerate building AI, but can we also steer? Whenever anyone mentions guardrails for AI, someone else objects, "No, we have to go fast!" But just because we're going fast doesn't mean we're going the right way.

open.substack.com/pub/hitrecor...

🧠 This #DementiaActionWeek, @alzheimerssoc.bsky.social is raising awareness about getting a timely diagnosis. 1 in 3 people with dementia do not have one

🩺 Diagnosis helps access treatment, advice and support


Info 👉 zurl.co/tZt2E
Support 👉 zurl.co/iAA1f

Microbiome: First bacteria we meet can keep us out of hospital For the first time, scientists show how our microbiome forms affects the risk of infection.

📰 First bacteria we ever meet can keep us out of hospital

✏️ BBC article about a new study from @sangerinstitute.bsky.social & @ucl.ac.uk

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Last lab session at Royal Free this year - it was so cool to see an inverse microscope today!

Ancient genetic data reveals biological sex and genetic variability of Paranthropus robustus — HERI - Human Evolution Research Institute Using a technique called palaeoproteomics, researchers extracted 2-million-year-old protein remains from Paranthropus robustus teeth to reveal biological sex and genetic variability. 

🧬NEW: Our Dr Palesa Madupe & colleagues retrieved some of the oldest human genetic data from #Africa

They identify 2million year-old protein remains from Paranthropus robustus to reveal its biological sex & genetic variability

Read about this breakthrough in human evolution studies: bit.ly/3HiOgqP

Deleted Ombudsman reports, silencing lawmakers, holding authorities to account "Authorities should understand that speaking out is not 'attacking' the government but trying to improve local governance," writes John Burns.

"Authorities should understand that speaking out is not 'attacking' the government but trying to improve local governance," writes John Burns. In full: buff.ly/WbN2jwJ

💭What does decolonising praxis look like in public administration and public value?

Join us for two workshops by IIPP and UCL STEaPP to brainstorm, dialogue, & reflect on this and more.

🔗Learn more: buff.ly/HiAmXIT
✍️Register here: buff.ly/NG9SXZP
❗️Apply by 10 June 2025, 17:00 BST

Could ‘pausing’ cell death be the final frontier in medicine on Earth and beyond? The process of necrosis, a form of cell death, may represent one of the most promising ways to change the course of human aging, disease and even space travel, according to a new study from researcher...

The process of necrosis, a form of cell death, may represent one of the most promising ways to change the course of human aging, disease and even space travel, according to a new study from Dr Keith Siew @uclmedsci.bsky.social with LinkGevity & @esa.int
www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/ma...

Examples of responses to moral distress

The pain of an unethical situation is not all in your head.

Moral distress and moral injury show up in our bodies and behaviors. 💔

“I’ve studied McCarthyism’s impact on higher education for 50 years. What’s happening now is worse.” -Ellen Schrecker, historian

Academic freedom in the United States has found itself periodically under siege, but the current attacks from the federal government raise a new level of alarm. nyer.cm/u405qvQ

In maybe 20 or 30 years time - I might be proven wrong. He might be rigorously monitoring his works, and we might have a proper scope of what happened in 2018 through his willingness to cooperate with the larger scientific community. But at the end of the day - I believe it doesn’t right his wrongs.

And so I have argued in the past that he does all of this for fame. The loud announcement seven years back about a breakthrough in germline gene editing - to the current day “unhinged” tweets on X; it just feels like a shout for attention.

And to argue that he did it for the science, or the “greater good” - would not be entirely correct. If it really were to be the case - surely we would have documentation or at least some data (transparency) to trace what he has done, or even monitoring the babies after the experiment.

And therefore to argue that he was doing it for the parents and their future generation would not be correct, as there is no consideration for the parents whether they actually want their children to be put under this “novel” experiment - nor actually considering the aftermath, whether it works.

There are two main things which He Jiankui’s actions don’t sit right with me - and I guess the majority of the populace:
1. The germline gene editing was not done under informed consent;
2. Research was not transparent, making it hard to determine long term effects.

Now I know the He Jiankui CRISPR babies incident happened back in 2018, but I still feel the need to address this for the misinformed - or the passively informed people on this matter.

YouTube video by hankschannel Let's Not Be Confused About This Genetically Modified Baby

youtu.be/OmLAvH1OoAA?... Wanted to share this video - as it reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend a while back.

Marsupial research reveals how mammalian embryos form Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have revealed insight into why embryos erase a key epigenetic mark during early development, suggesting this may have evolved to help form a placenta.

Researchers at the Crick have identified a key step in the development of mammalian embryos, shedding light on how mammals have evolved to generate placentas, among other features.

www.crick.ac.uk/news-and-fea...

Researchers @uclpophealthsci.bsky.social and @crick.ac.uk, led by Dr @kenzoivanovitch.bsky.social & Shayma Abukar, have, for the first time, identified the origin of cardiac cells using 3D images of a heart forming in real-time, inside a living mouse embryo www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/ma...