Hamed Helal

Assistant Professor, interested in DNA Damage response (DDR) #DNAreplicationstress #miRNAs #Bigdataanalysis

[MIT Stone Center on Inequality & Shaping Work @MITshapingwork]

We're hiring a postdoc at MIT!

The Postdoctoral Associate will work closely with @DAcemogluMIT and @baselinescene to conduct research on the history, social implications and future of technology.

Learn more and apply by June 15: https://t.co/HNDVJ8V5PS

[Eric Topol @EricTopol]

We've known how important the tumor microenvironment is for cancer progression and treatment, but we never had a non-invasive blood test to assess it. Today, as reported @nature, one has been discovered https://t.co/rDaF5YUwTq

[Eric Topol @EricTopol]

"The human genome encodes for a new category of molecule"
"The ‘dark proteome’ is upending our understanding of human disease"
@Nature
"Expanding the human proteome with microproteins and peptideins"
https://t.co/5ncSKGKHBH
https://t.co/2Rx65FJCbG @statnews @MeganMolteni
https://t.co/7mATxNQ1EO @TheEconomist

[Piero Carninci @carninci]

Excellent postdoctoral fellowships.
https://t.co/NOy4sTChNH

There are types of fellowships for Europe and for outside Europe (including Japan and RIKEN)

[Eric Topol @EricTopol]

We should be prioritizing prevention of cancer instead of the major focus on detection and treatment. A new @CellCellPress perspective
https://t.co/Gkso3gGPOI

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

🚨BREAKING: Stanford and Microsoft just built an AI scientist that writes medical research papers that actually pass peer review.

Not summaries. Not drafts. Full papers reviewed and accepted by real scientists.

This is not a demo and this is not a prototype. A peer-reviewed conference just accepted a paper that no human wrote, and most people have absolutely no idea it happened.

The system is called Medical AI Scientist and it works in three stages that run completely on their own.

First, it reads medical literature, identifies real clinical gaps, and generates a research hypothesis grounded in actual disease evidence, not a hallucination and not a generic idea pulled from thin air. Then it writes the code, runs the experiment inside a secure environment, catches its own errors, and fixes them without any human stepping in. Then it writes the full paper, including the introduction, methods, results, figures, ethics statement, citations, and LaTeX formatting, from start to finish, autonomously.

They tested it against GPT-5 and Gemini 2.5 Pro across 171 real medical research cases covering 19 clinical tasks, and the results were not close. Medical AI Scientist successfully completed experiments 91 to 93 percent of the time. GPT-5 managed 60 to 75 percent. Gemini 2.5 Pro collapsed somewhere between 40 and 53 percent.

Then they ran the part that genuinely broke my brain. Ten independent medical experts with over five years of first-author publishing experience reviewed the AI-generated papers side by side with real human papers from MICCAI, ISBI, and BIBM, the top conferences in medical imaging, and nobody knew which was which.

The AI papers scored competitively on novelty, clarity, coherence, and reproducibility across the board, and one paper was accepted at a peer-reviewed conference after a full review process.

Here is what nobody is saying out loud.

Medical research has a brutal bottleneck where ideas pile up, experiments take months, papers take even longer, and patients wait the entire time. That problem just got a serious solution, and the implications for healthcare are enormous.

[Science News @SciencNews]

Nature Index: Institution rankings

[Michelle Monje 🟦 @michelle_monje]

Wonderful resource for early career scientists, especially those in #Cancer and #Neuroscience!

[Jainam Parmar @aiwithjainam]

BREAKING: Claude can now research like a Stanford PhD student.

Here are 9 insane Claude prompts that turn 40+ research papers into structured literature reviews, knowledge maps, and research gaps in minutes (Save this)

[Hamed Helal @Helaly2007]

Outstanding work

[BENU BRATA DAS (BBD Lab) @benubrata]

Excited to share our paper in Nature Communications!
We show that PRMT5 localizes to mitochondria and regulates TFAM in mtDNA maintenance—revealing a new mitochondrial function for PRMT5.

🔗 https://t.co/kDBN9PoCFm

Grateful to my students and @ANRF SUPRA @DST ⁦@DBTIndia⁩

[nature @Nature]

CAR-T cell therapy seems to have reset the immune system and eased severe symptoms in eight children and adolescents with autoimmune disorders

https://t.co/8VAkUXol6X

[Dr. Patrick Hwu @PatrickHwuMD]

#ScienceSaturday

❓ Can your own brain and nervous system promote cancer growth?

➡️ A new study in Nature reveals a hidden “conversation” between lung tumors and the brain that shuts down the immune system.

➡️ Researchers discovered lung cancer can act like a puppet master, using a specific nerve pathway called the vagal sensory-sympathetic axis to protect itself.

➡️ Here’s how this “secret circuit” works:

• The Signal: Lung tumors release growth factors that attract and activate “sensing” nerves called vagal sensory neurons.

• The Brain Connection: These nerves send a distress signal from the tumor all the way to the brainstem.

• The Command: The brain responds by sending a message back down through sympathetic nerves, releasing noradrenaline directly into the tumor.

• The Sabotage: Noradrenaline flips a switch (the ADRB2 receptor) on immune cells called macrophages, turning them suppressive and blocking killer T cells from attacking.

➡️ Why does this matter? When researchers broke this circuit, by silencing the nerves or blocking the noradrenaline switch, the immune system “woke up,” and tumor growth slowed significantly.

➡️ This discovery is a game changer because it shows cancer isn’t just a local problem, it can hijack our own nervous system to survive. Targeting this tumor-brain circuit could open new doors for future therapies.

🌟 Shoutout to the research team led by Haohan K. Wei and Chuyue D. Yu for uncovering how our own nerves can be “tricked” by tumors! 👏🔬

@Nature @YaleMed @PennMedicine

🔗 Read the full study: https://t.co/QkTVCSM8Rc

[Eric Topol @EricTopol]

The complexity of our immune system is daunting. But there's a path to deconvolute it and understand causal relationships. It's CRISPR. open-access @JExpMed
https://t.co/QF6Cvkbfz2

[Peter H. Diamandis, MD @PeterDiamandis]

70% lifespan extension in elderly mice using a simple drug combo. Not gene therapy. Not nanotech. Simple pharmaceuticals. If it scales to humans, everything changes. Longevity is accelerating. ⏱️ https://t.co/vOCxjDvNg0

[JAMA @JAMA_current]

#Type1Diabetes affects approximately 2 million people in the US and 8.4 million people worldwide.

🔗 Learn more about the diagnosis and treatment of type 1 diabetes in this JAMA Review:

https://t.co/B4KWgoP38w

[Dr. Filippo Cademartiri @FCademartiri]

🫀🏃‍♂️ Exercise Physiology: Why Fitness Is a Vital Sign

Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) isn’t just about performance — it’s one of the strongest predictors of cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. In fact, the American Heart Association recommends treating CRF as a clinical vital sign.

At the center of CRF is VO₂ max — the gold standard measure of maximal oxygen uptake. It reflects the integrated function of:

❤️ Heart (cardiac output)
🫁 Lungs (ventilation & gas exchange)
🩸 Blood (oxygen delivery)
💪 Muscle (mitochondrial extraction & utilization)

Using the Fick equation, oxygen consumption = cardiac output × arteriovenous O₂ difference. In simple terms: how much blood the heart pumps × how much oxygen muscles extract.

📉 Without training, VO₂ max declines ~1% per year with aging — but this decline is attenuated by sustained physical activity.

🔥 Fuel dynamics matter:
At low intensity → fat predominates
At higher intensity → carbohydrates take over
The “crossover” reflects neurohormonal and metabolic shifts.

🧠 Thresholds define performance:
• Ventilatory threshold = sustainable steady-state intensity
• Lactate threshold ≠ “fatigue toxin” — lactate is a metabolic shuttle, not waste
• VE/VCO₂ slope = powerful prognostic marker in heart failure

💓 During exercise, cardiac output can increase ≥5-fold. Stroke volume adaptation — not heart rate — is the primary training-driven cardiac improvement.

🫁 In healthy individuals, lungs rarely limit maximal exercise — it’s usually the heart and peripheral extraction.

🔎 Bottom line:
Exercise is not a single-organ phenomenon. It is a fully integrated systems test of human physiology — and one of the most powerful tools in prevention medicine.

Fitness is not optional biology. It’s measurable resilience.

[Scott Isaacs @scottisaacsmd]

Must-read Review in Nature Medicine from @DanielJDrucker: a masterclass on how GLP-1 medicines moved from glucose control to reshaping obesity, CV, liver, kidney, neuro and addiction care.
https://t.co/8ydiYIxdS0

[David Sinclair @davidasinclair]

New paper: How epigenetic changes may contribute to aging by releasing jumping genes (transposons) that break DNA while reinserting into the genome, causing further epigenetic changes…🧵

[Samuel Hume @DrSamuelBHume]

Pancreatic cancer: what new therapies are in the pipeline?

[Eric Topol @EricTopol]

The most used multicancer early detection (MCED) blood test (liquid biopsy) uses methylation (GRAIL). But combining that with DNA fragmentomics, as reported today @NatureCancer, improves early detection
https://t.co/VkNDR4XuW3