Adrienne Samani,PhD

CTM. Mom to Fiona. Dog mom to Georgie. FirstGenPhD. Intolerant to racism. Fueled by coffee.

[Adrienne Samani,PhD @MuscleMouseAdr1]

Finished my private defense !! Officially Dr. Samani!! PhD done !!! ✅✅ 🎉🎉🎉

[Mikaela Stiver, PhD @MikaelaStiver]

In memory of the incomparable Andre Braugher, here is my all-time favourite scene from Brooklyn Nine-Nine (which hits extra close to home while living in a province that won’t let PhDs use the title even though it’s *literally describing a doctor*!) 💛 RIP legend 💛

[Karen Attiah @KarenAttiah]

Honestly, American media is failing so badly right now.

Shameful and embarrassing.

[Adrienne Samani,PhD @MuscleMouseAdr1]

@J_I_Benjamin There is a super great podcast episode from Sanjay Gupta about caffeine on the brain, made me change the way I drink coffee 😬😬

[Ana Mingorance @CNSdrughunter]

@PearlF The design is what I find unethical. A delayed start design, I can see. A placebo-controlled trial for a gene therapy (long trial) in a degenerative disease or a childhood disease means the placebo patients will miss their perhaps only chance to get better. They are not lab mice.

[Angus Lindsay @AJCLindsay]

Safety and efficacy of tamoxifen in boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (TAMDMD): a multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 3 trial - The Lancet Neurology https://t.co/Dvl5mEP51r

[Matthew S. Alexander @Matt_Muscle_Guy]

@MuscleMouseAdr1 @Muthukumar72863 @MyoMittens Congrats to @MuscleMouseAdr1 @Muthukumar72863 and @MyoMittens for their new @FASEBorg manuscript. Glad to see this work on the role of DOCK3 and muscle final out!

[Adrienne Samani,PhD @MuscleMouseAdr1]

Super excited to announce the publication of my thesis work from the Alexander lab,@Muthukumar72863 and @MyoMittens congrats to the team!
“DOCK3 regulates normal skeletal muscle regeneration and glucose metabolism”. https://t.co/VsCzygj8ud

[Adrienne Samani,PhD @MuscleMouseAdr1]

Sunday breakfast with the little ❤️ (definitely loved the whip cream on her pancakes)

[Jimmy Turner, MD @TPP_MD]

I’m not sure who needs to hear this, but when I was in med school, a professor told me I would fail out…

Before I became the student body president, chief resident, youngest golden apple winner, and associate prof in just 6 years

You alone get to determine your ability & worth #MedTwitter

[Adrienne Samani,PhD @MuscleMouseAdr1]

Exactly. Wondered this myself. It doesn’t make any sense. But she has both our names anyway.

[Adrienne Samani,PhD @MuscleMouseAdr1]

@DoubleDocJ 🤣

[Freyssenet Damien @Freyssenet_D]

Autophagy ablation in skeletal muscles worsens sepsis-induced muscle wasting, impairs whole-body metabolism, and decreases survival.: iScience https://t.co/OLq2ozYTSS

[Paul Fairie @paulisci]

The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

🧵

[Adrienne Samani,PhD @MuscleMouseAdr1]

Learned today my dad is cancer free!! It’s been a lot of life over the past year, but have a lot of gratitude for things turning out ok. 🙏🏽 giving thanks everyday 🥲

[Cristina Legido-Quigley @DrLegidoQuigley]

🚨 warning long rant on paper rejection

Today I received a paper rejection and I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by it 🥺 there were tears

Despite dedicating two decades to science, I’ve reminded that setbacks are all too common. It seems to me like a game of chance, where one unfavorable reviewer can wreak havoc on the hard work of many. Unfortunately, this was one of those cases.

We had support from two positive reviewers but it was the scathing critique of one individual that convinced the editor.

Hours upon hours were spent addressing this one reviewer comments, after we were granted an appeal, going above and beyond, doing several additional experiments & calculations in teams in Denmark, Italy & Spain. Our appeal letter grew to a staggering 27 pages, on top we created a GitHub with average raw data, a GitHub with code, all in the effort to respond to every comment by one anonymous person.

Initially, our paper started as studying a blood multiomics dataset using a machine learning pipeline, we focused on the discovery of proteins and metabolites predicting conversion from mild cognitive problems to Alzheimer’s Disease. The manuscript is in medRxiv.

As we progressed the study, we sought new collaborations and successfully demonstrated the translatability of the #multiomics #ML or #AI pipeline with one of our strongest findings, elevated oleamide in Alzheimer’s, to cells, specifically in microglia in vitro. The results revealing for the first time the secretion of oleamide by activated microglia in vesicles. I was so happy by this, but apparently, this was not enough for the one reviewer.

In the revision process, we were asked to provide further evidence by conducting additional experiments. I understood microglia excitation experiments, so we set to quantify oleamide in more models of microglia exosomes.

This meant seeking out more collaborations, more experts, and more resources. Thankfully, we found wonderful collaborators & super experts in Milan five scientists in an institute and in a hospital, and their efforts together with our #massspec oleamide quantitation, validated further our findings in two rodent models and in blood exosomes from individuals with Alzheimer's Disease. Once again, I was blown away by the results. Yet, these additional experiments were not enough and today we got a rejection.

What was missing from our work, you might ask? Well, it looks like we have not done functional experiments. Now, as a clinical data, machine learning, mass spectrometry omics, and quantitative analysis lab, I was not expecting to be tasked with doing experiments we can’t do.

We need to show that oleamide induces an AD phenotype from a mild cognitive impairment phenotype?
I am not a biologist so it’s not something I could ever get funds to do.

As I reflect on my frustration, I want to emphasize that I remain hopeful that the exceptional early-career researchers involved in this project will see their efforts recognized. The new “revised” version will also be public soon in @medrxivpreprint, and I’ll find a good journal to house the work, I hope it doesn’t fall in the email of the same person, any journal recommendations?

If anyone wants to help with biology functional experiments from MCI to AD for a follow-up manuscript 🤗 even just advice give me a shout! I don’t know of any validated models for MCI

Thanks for reading my long rant 🙏🏻
I know it’s not the most riveting of stories but sciencing sometimes is pretty crushing

[Adrienne Samani,PhD @MuscleMouseAdr1]

Nothing beats scrolling through Twitter and seeing announcements of people I know succeeding, defending, and winning at life. Ah ☺️💕

[Adrienne Samani,PhD @MuscleMouseAdr1]

@njgallups @HarmsLabUAB @UAB_NeuroRMS @UAB_GBS @uab_neurology Nicole! That’s amazing!!! Congrats!!!

[Elisa Granato @Prokaryota]

Someone I know met a woman who's a Nobel-prize winning biologist and she said "I see you are wearing make-up, that already tells me that you're not focussed and committed enough to make it in science".

[Brittani James, MD @DrBrittaniJ]

Meanwhile, I went to an Ivy-League school with kids who had entire buildings named after someone in their family.

Yeeeah…Guess who doesn’t have access to generational wealth like that…

Slave-descended Black people like me.

We are 400 years behind you.

You are 400 years ahead of us.

I wasn’t the one who got the handout.

#AffirmativeAction