Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Melissa Kane PhD @cornymel.bsky.social · Jul 31

As stressful as it is to run a laboratory in the US right now, my thoughts are often with the NIH staff living in the awful chaos trying to preserve the whole enterprise. I’m grateful for every moment they choose not to give up. These people are the only thing keeping it from entirely collapsing.

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Warmflash lab @warmflashlab.bsky.social · Jul 14

Happy to share our latest preprint. We show that juxtaposing amnion cells with human pluripotent cells is enough to trigger gastrulation-like events. Great work by former student Xiangyu Kong now a postdoc in the Theunissen lab @washumedicine.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Juxtaposition of human pluripotent stem cells with amnion-like cells is sufficient to trigger primitive streak formation

Studies in the mouse have established that communication between the trophectoderm and the epiblast is crucial for initiating gastrulation. In the primate embryo, the amnion rather than the trophectod...

www.biorxiv.org

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American Society for Cell Biology @ascbiology.bsky.social · Jul 1

The "Big Beautiful Bill" isn’t the federal budget—it’s a reconciliation bill focused on tax cuts. The real FY26 funding decisions for NIH, NSF, and more are happening now in Congress.

www.ascb.org/science-poli...

The "Big Beautiful Bill" is Not the Budget - ASCB

If you’ve read recent news about Congress trying to pass “the budget,” you may have noticed that even Washington, D.C. reporters don’t always have a firm grasp on the details of what they’re covering....

www.ascb.org

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Hillary Rodham Clinton @hillaryclinton.bsky.social · Jun 30

If one of these people is your senator, it is incredibly important that you call them today.

Urge them to vote NO on the Senate budget bill that would make most Americans poorer to give billionaires a tax cut they don't even need.

Iowa: Sen. Ernst
Maine: Sen. Collins
Missouri: Sen. Hawley
North Carolina: Sen. Tillis
Ohio: Sen. Husted
Utah: Sen. Curtis
West Virginia: Sen. Capito

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amyaconroy.bsky.social @amyaconroy.bsky.social · Jun 24

We're tired of the false information and wrote this letter to the NIH director Jay Bhattacharya. FACT: clinical trials have been halted. With real ethical impacts. Is this what Americans want to be known for? Let's see what the director says.

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Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · Jun 10

Today, my NIH colleagues and I did something scary but really important. We spoke up about egregious harms we are seeing happen to research participants and public health through thoughtless and politicized policies at NIH. 🧵1/3

apnews.com/article/nih-...

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ProPublica @propublica.org · Jun 12

NEW: The Trump administration cut research funding that sought cures for future pandemics, examined the causes of dementia and tried to prevent HIV transmission.

ProPublica heard from more than 150 researchers to understand the work that’s been lost.

Shattered Science: The Research Lost as Trump Targets NIH Funding

The Trump administration cut research funding that sought cures for future pandemics, examined the causes of dementia and tried to prevent HIV transmission. More than 150 researchers shared with…

projects.propublica.org

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Warmflash lab @warmflashlab.bsky.social · Jun 11

Happy to share our latest on a system to study anterior-posterior patterning of the nervous system. We show Wnt signaling pattern is not a simple low to high gradient and timing of activation is crucial to setting the pattern. From outstanding grad student Siqi Du.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A novel self-organizing embryonic stem cell system reveals the role of Wnt signaling parameters in anterior-posterior patterning of the nervous system

A Wnt activity gradient is essential for the formation of the anterior-posterior (AP) axis in all vertebrates. The relationship between the dynamics of Wnt signaling and specification of AP coordinate...

www.biorxiv.org

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · May 16

A Path Forward to Save American Bio-Medical Research talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-pat...

A Path Forward to Save American Bio-Medical Research

Over the past four months I’ve spoken to dozens of biomedical researchers...

talkingpointsmemo.com

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Heemskerk Lab @heemskerklab.bsky.social · May 8

Our work on mesoderm development in 2D gastruloids is now published in nature methods

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

Extended culture of 2D gastruloids to model human mesoderm development - Nature Methods

This study reports an extended 2D gastruloid system for spatially modeling human mesoderm development.

www.nature.com

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Warmflash lab @warmflashlab.bsky.social · May 7

Many people are asking - what on earth is the point of killing biomedical research? Read this from @joshtpm.bsky.social who has covered this very well. Admin is using funding to exert control over universities, they don't care about resulting damage to science. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/why-d...

Why Do They Have It In For Biomedical Research?

Here is a brief follow-up on the question TPM Reader MA addresses...

talkingpointsmemo.com

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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · Apr 23

ACTION ITEM-----ACTION ITEM

Implementation of Schedule F

This is what a lot of us have been worried about.

This allows for many civil service positions to replaced with political appointees. This could include NIH institute directors and even POs.

BUT THERE IS A COMMENT PERIOD...

1/n

the word alert is in a purple circle

ALT: the word alert is in a purple circle

media.tenor.com

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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · Apr 22

I received this letter, sent to 11 Republican members of Congress this weekend from anonymous NIHers.

1/n
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A letter to Republican Senators from concerned federal workers at NIH.

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Scott Delaney @scott-delaney.bsky.social · Apr 15

As someone directly affected by this, let me be clear:

I'd rather lose my job because Harvard chose to fight than keep my job and see a generation of white supremacists parade its corpse around like a war trophy.

STAT @statnews.com · Apr 15

Researchers at Harvard and its affiliates appreciate that the university resisted the Trump Administration's demands, but worry about what happens next.

At Harvard, scientists worry over the consequences of resisting the Trump administration: $2.2B in grants frozen

Researchers at Harvard and its affiliates appreciate that the university resisted the Trump Administration's demands, but worry about what happens next.

buff.ly

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · Apr 7

This is a big deal. Spread the word. But it’s tiny compared to the totality of what’s happening at NIH. Cure Research for all cancers, Alzheimer’s, everything is being gutted. Intentionally. It’s all getting burned to the ground but the news isn’t getting out. The new cures won’t be there for you.

Susan Rinkunas @susanrinkunas.com · Apr 7

I would be making a big deal out of this if I were an elected Democrat

NIH scientists have a cancer breakthrough. Layoffs are delaying it.

A big step forward in cancer therapy has been slowed by layoffs and new restrictions at the National Institutes of Health, where it was developed.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Alt NIH Bluesky 🧪 @altnih4science.bsky.social · Apr 4

From a source at NIH:

“Right now NIH’s ability to buy things is dead. Nearly all people with the power to make an order — purchasing people — have been removed.
The NIH hospital can’t buy medicines, the labs can’t buy petri dishes. X-Ray machine breaks? Too bad.
Everything is stopped”

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David Corn @davidcorn.bsky.social · Apr 2

It’s stunning to me that the New York Times did not put the story on the bloodbath at the NIH, CDC, and FDA on its front page this morning.

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Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · Mar 30

Trump has cut the NIH budget by more than half in defiance of Congressionally mandated appropriations for the agency. No comparison historically, not even the Great Recession. This is clearly not legal and Congress needs to address it.

Graph from the Washington Post showing declines in spending at NIH. New grants cut from 1 billion to around 400 million. Overall grants down from 4.5 billion to 2.4 billion.

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Alt NIH Bluesky 🧪 @altnih4science.bsky.social · Mar 28

"The consolidation/RIF plan pulls power away from scientists and puts it in the hands of political employees. It sets up Trump and Musk to kill NIH as an evidence-based science funder. We must stop this plan."

New contributed post on our blog: Please read.
It describes Orban and authoritarianism. 🧪

The NIH firing plan is really a radical institute merger and an authoritarian takeover

this is an Orbanization of US science: a move to exert political control over discovery, which will kill the US medical research industry and end cancer cures. The plan must be stopped. We can act.

open.substack.com

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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · Mar 28

Just before bedtime last night I got a message from inside NIH which read:

“It’s so, so bad and no one cares (who has any influence)”

I asked “What, in particular?”

My friend responded “Everything”

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Alt NIH Bluesky 🧪 @altnih4science.bsky.social · Mar 7

The @standupforscience.bsky.social DC rally is on.

What we are hearing from around the country:
"this is big!"
"biggest rally I have seen around here in years and years"

The public cares about medical research--and students, GenZ, and other people too are ready to stand up.

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Warmflash lab @warmflashlab.bsky.social · Mar 7

Good crowd to #StandUpForScience on Rice campus. Some powerful speeches from trainees about having opportunities suddenly taken from them and the personal impacts of the administration's targeting of minorities. Very real damage has already been done.

Image of crowd at Rice Stand up for Science event

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Molly Jong-Fast @mollyjongfast.bsky.social · Mar 2

Richest guy in the world telling us we can’t afford to have our government fund cancer research.

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Expedition Works @expeditionworks.bsky.social · Mar 1

A story from one of the fired 18F employees:

www.linkedin.com/posts/zachar...

Zachary Cohn on LinkedIn: In 2015, I became a federal employee at 18F, an office inside of the…

In 2015, I became a federal employee at 18F, an office inside of the General Services Administration. It was the hardest, and best, job of my life. While…

www.linkedin.com

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · Feb 28

We talk about Bezos, or Citi, or Big Tech, but cancer's brand is seriously in the toilet. Everyone hates it. And yet, day one hit from Trump/Musk was to shut down all federal funding for cancer cure research. And it's still mostly shut down. Have you ever known anyone with cancer?

Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · Feb 28

Looking at some survey data here. Trump/Elon cutting off all cancer cure research is the issue that freaks voters out more than any other, also the one they've heard the least about. Important for voters to hear more about this.

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