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Abs Khan

@abattacks.bsky.social

85 followers 19 following 26 posts

Research Fellow @ MRC WIMM. Permanent resident of tissue culture hood 82. Organoids, bone marrow and haematopoeisis by day. Heavy metal, climbing, bookworm also by day let’s be honest I’m too old to do anything in the evenings any more.

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Reposted by Abs Khan

MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine @imm.ox.ac.uk · 28d

NEW: Oxford researchers link mini organs to show how immune cells race to the rescue after heart injury 🧪

@abattacks.bsky.social & colleagues linked cardiac and bone marrow organoids with a 3D-printed device to model this complex immune response.

Learn more 👇

@rdm.ox.ac.uk | @medsci.ox.ac.uk

Body-in-a-chip approach reveals how immune cells respond to heart injury

Oxford scientists build a connected, ‘multi-organoid’ platform that recreates immune recruitment to the heart, opening new avenues to probe disease and test therapies.

www.imm.ox.ac.uk

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Jun 3

As a side note - I didn't think much of a 100km row over the whole month, but 10km in and I must say I am questioning my judgement/fitness/ability...

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Jun 3

Different flavour of post from me today!

A bunch of us in the lab at the @imm.ox.ac.uk are taking up Bone Cancer Research Trust (BCRT)'s June rowing challenge to both raise funds and awareness:

www.justgiving.com/fundraising/...

Please share/donate if you can!

HSCB lab rows 100km each for bone cancer research

Help Abdullah Khan raise money to support Bone Cancer Research Trust

www.justgiving.com

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Apr 16

Looking forward to it Zoltan - bring me some home cooking !

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Apr 2

I loved this course! If Aiden or Natalie are instructing say hi from me!

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Mar 12

Thank you 😀

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Mar 12

😊🥹

MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine @imm.ox.ac.uk · Mar 12

Congratulations to MRC WIMM researchers Sarah, @abattacks.bsky.social, Pramila & Jack 🎉

Radcliffe Department of Medicine @rdm.ox.ac.uk · Mar 12

Congratulations to RDM's newly designated Principal Investigators for 2025! 🎉

Sarah Gooding
Sarah Howles
Abdullah Khan
Pramila Rijal
Jack Tan

Read more about our new PIs and their research 👇

www.rdm.ox.ac.uk/news/announc...

@imm.ox.ac.uk

Reposted by Abs Khan

Alejo Rodriguez-Fraticelli @alejofraticelli.bsky.social · Feb 25

🔥 New Fraticelli lab publication🔥

“Pre-existing stem cell heterogeneity dictates clonal responses to the acquisition of leukemia driver mutations”

Now at Cell Stem Cell, with two new figures, in vivo, and sequential mutagenesis data.

Performed with the support of Cris Cancer and @erc.europa.eu

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Feb 19

Very kind of you Dianne, appreciated!

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Feb 18

Finally finally a big thank you to everyone who has engaged with and showed an interest in implementing the system. I am hopeful that we can make big strides forward as a community as these types of systems advance. Thank you to patients + funders!

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Feb 18

. If you're interested in implementing please join: groups.google.com/g/morerganoids
Where we help troubleshoot + share protocols etc.

And this is the playlist:
open.spotify.com/playlist/380...
To which the paper was written for everyone out there who writes/works to very specific music.

Bone Marrow Organoids - Google Groups

groups.google.com

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Feb 18

A lot of the major therapeutic challenges and many interesting questions are around clonal evolution, chemoresistance etc. To address those well we need longer lived, 'stable' cultures - we see a decline in complexity over time in our static cultures. Watch this space!

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Feb 18

I'll end on quoting @kellystevens.bsky.social 'It's not about how far we've come, but about how far we have left to go.' I hope you will agree this is a big step forward, but there are still challenges that I am excited to tackle (funding pending of course).

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Feb 18

... you can build in a lot of complexity and work out strategies to retain throughput and scalability.

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Feb 18

We present what we believe is a highly complex in vitro model that showcases the potential of human organoid systems. By adapting granular microgels pioneered by colleagues in the bioengineering field (e.g. J Burdick and others), I think we also show that...

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Feb 18

Finally that helps us identify an inflammatory pathway (MIF) which we think underpins myeloma mediated inflammation. We show that inhibiting this in myeloma-comBO chimeroids ameliorates markers of inflammation.

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Feb 18

We then apply this system as a pre-clinical model to study multiple myeloma - showing that we support primary myeloma cells (notoriously difficult to culture ex vivo) and capture hallmarks of their extensive interactions with bone marrow niches.

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Feb 18

In this manuscript we address these to present comBO: a combined bone and lympho-myeloid bone marrow organoid system (I know the acronym is a bit of a reach, but it's stuck now).

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Feb 18

(1) Capturing simultaneous lympho- and myelopoiesis in a single culture to better model haematopoiesis. (2) Generating the specialist osteoblastic niche and (3) circumventing the limitations imposed by bulk hydrogel embedding (cost, labour, scalability, automation).

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Feb 18

On to the science! Despite recent advances in developing bone marrow organoid systems (our own work in Cancer Discovery (2023) and Nature Protocols (2024) + Frenz-Weissner paper (Nature Methods, 2024), the major challenges (as we see them) remained:

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Feb 18

And of course @bethpsaila.bsky.social for all the support (and patience...). A big thank you to the whole HSCB lab for all the support which most often manifests as pranks/coffee/donuts...

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Feb 18

... it can still be fun so a huge thank you to everyone who made it so. In particular shout out to @yuqi-shen.bsky.social qi-shen.bsky.social without whose support it would have been impossible to do this. @Sarah Gooding for gentle guidance and excellent collaboration in the myeloma world.

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Feb 18

First and foremost, a huge thank you to all co-authors. This has been a tricky project to pull together having moved twice + juggling demands of grant writing/trying to set up a research group. With the support of lovely people in an excellent environment @imm.ox.ac.uk ...

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Feb 18

Good morning everyone, I'm pleased to share our latest advance in bone marrow in vitro modelling:

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

comBO: A combined human bone and lympho-myeloid bone marrow organoid for pre-clinical modelling of haematopoietic disorders

The bone marrow supports lifelong blood and immune cell production. Current human bone marrow organoid models do not include both lymphoid and myeloid elements and lack the complexity of stromal cell ...

www.biorxiv.org

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · Jan 2

Still 😍🔥🔥🔥🔥