Rafa Díaz

[Noubar Afeyan @NoubarAfeyan]

Today marks an important milestone for @moderna_tx , for the field of mRNA, and for the many people working to bring new possibilities to patients.
This morning, Moderna and Merck announced positive Phase 3 results for adjuvant treatment with intismeran autogene, an individualized mRNA therapy for melanoma, in combination with KEYTRUDA, in patients with completely resected stage IIB-IV melanoma. The study met its primary endpoint of recurrence-free survival and a key secondary endpoint of distant metastasis-free survival.
This is the first positive Phase 3 result for an individualized neoantigen therapy, and the first for an mRNA-based cancer therapy.
When we founded Moderna in 2010, the idea that mRNA could become a new class of medicines was outright rejected. The idea that we might use it to create a therapy designed around the unique mutations in an individual patient’s tumor was even further from reality.
Today’s result is a reminder of what can emerge from pioneering: asking questions others have not yet asked, following the science where it leads, and persevering through uncertainty.
There is important work still ahead but today is a moment to recognize the extraordinary work behind this milestone.
Congratulations to the entire Moderna team, our partners at Merck, and the investigators who made this study possible. Most importantly, my gratitude goes to the patients and families whose participation enables progress like this.
Proud of this milestone, and of everyone who helped bring us here.

[PhD_Genie @PhD_Genie]

When your paper got published

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

Medical breakthroughs in 2025, by @salonium https://t.co/seJ50O0cFt

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

We Live Like Royalty and Don’t Know It.
("The electric grid, the public-water supply, the food-distribution network, and the public-health system took the collective labor of thousands of people over many decades. They are the cathedrals of our secular era. They are high among the great accomplishments of our civilization. But they don’t inspire bestselling novels or blockbuster films. No poets celebrate the sewage treatment plants that prevent them from dying of dysentery." https://t.co/7TB9kWj6bM

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

A new study on "Where Discovery Happens" found that with basic research in the life sciences, Harvard contributes more than Canada & France combined. Boston, Cambridge, & Newton are just behind all of China—and well ahead of every other country in the world. Most of this is from federal funding, which is not, contrary to popular misunderstanding, "taxpayer support of Harvard" -- it's a fee for service, namely discoveries in the life sciences. (Thanks to my colleague Jason Furman for this summary.) https://t.co/jACK5ZYgNv

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

The death of Jim Watson marks the end of an era.

He was last of those involved in the greatest scientific discovery of the 20th century, perhaps of all time: the secret of life.

A key figure in early molecular biology, including the discovery of messenger RNA.

Author of a highly influential text book the Molecular Biology of the Gene.

Author of a truly extraordinary “nonfiction novel” about science, The Double Helix.

Outstanding leader of two huge scientific enterprises: cold spring harbour and the human genome project.

Any one of these achievements would be remarkable. Together they are titanic.

Controversial, contrarian, eccentric, brilliant.

[Uncle Milty’s Ghost @his_eminence_j]

Guys, this is so important to understand fully:

The market is being dragged up by only about 10 companies, all AI, all round-tripping revenue, all making outlandish claims of future earnings while producing none of it in real life. They are now actively coordinating public relations messages and cross-sells to each other in order to continue to push the bubble up.

This is extraordinarily dangerous. I’ve not seen this before in my entire career. It’s a bubble that makes the dot-com era look like a pimple in comparison.

Laying the current BS aside, and taking their claims at face value, investors need to realize that we will never get there. Not for a decade or more.

We don’t have the energy infrastructure to provide for the data centers to even get remotely close to the earnings these companies have claimed.

And if they do magically transform our society, somehow, what it will mean to you is far fewer available jobs and much, much higher energy costs.

And yet, they drag the markets up every day. Eight out of 11 sectors, fully 80% of the companies in the index, were DOWN yesterday.

[Gary Marcus @GaryMarcus]

overheard:

Two AI investors are walking in a forest when they come across a pile of shit.

The first AI investor says to the other "I'll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit."

The second AI investor takes the $100 and eats the pile of shit.

They continue walking until they come across a second pile of shit.

The second AI investor turns to the first and says "I'll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit."

The first AI investor takes the $100 and eats the pile of shit.

Walking a little more, the first AI investor looks at the second and says, "You know, I gave you $100 to eat shit, then you gave me back the same $100 to eat shit, I can't help but feel like we both just ate shit for nothing."

"That's not true" responded the second AI investor. "We increased our stock price's value by $20 billion."

[Charles Brenner, PhD @CharlesMBrenner]

wrong

they introduced 20 mutations into living wolves that made them bigger and whiter

they did not de-extinct the dire wolf and they know they didn’t

[Lee Fang @lhfang]

Increasingly rude behavior on airplanes, road rage, yelling at wait staff, etc. seems to be on the rise still alongside politicians refusing to concede, shake hands w/opponents, practice basic civility. It's a general societal decline in decency that should not be celebrated.

[REFORMA @Reforma]

🔴#ÚltimaHora🔴México perdió la disputa comercial por maíz genéticamente modificado, ya que panel de T-MEC concluyó que medidas mexicanas no se basan en la ciencia y socavan acceso al mercado, según EU.
https://t.co/IJblJ2TeGq

[Miguel A. Méndez-Rojas @nanoprofe]

Ahí están, en parte, las consecuencias de una política contaminada ideológicamente (Elena Álvarez Buylla) sobre no permitir maíces mejorados para resistir sequías o climas extremos.

[Colin Wright @SwipeWright]

Noam Chomsky on the pseudointellectualism of postmodern literary theorists.

"If you look at what's happening, I think it's pretty easy to figure out what's going on. I mean, suppose you're a literary scholar at some elite university or an anthropologist or whatever. If you do your work seriously, that's fine, but you don't get any big prizes for it. On the other hand, you take a look over in the rest of the university, and you got these guys in the physics department and the math department, and they have all kind of complicated theories, which, of course, we can't understand, but they they seem to understand them. And they have principles and they deduce complicated things from the principles and they do experiments, and they find either they work or they don't work.

"And so that's really impressive stuff, so I want to be like that too. So I want to have a theory in in the humanities, you know, literary criticism, anthropology, and so on. There's a field called 'theory.' We're just like the physicists. They talk incomprehensibly, we can talk incomprehensibly. They have big words, we'll have big words. They draw far reaching conclusions, we'll draw far reaching conclusions. We're just as prestigious as they are.

"Now if they say, well, look, we're doing real science and you guys aren't, that's white male sexist, bourgeois, whatever the answer is. How are we any different from them? Okay. That's appealing."

h/t @crocoduck_king

[Michael Shermer @michaelshermer]

For those who think that violence against women in sports by transwomen/men is a right-wing moral panic that isn't actually happening, here is the UN Report. Key stat:
"The replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-sex category has resulted in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals, when competing against males. According to information received, by 30 March 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports."
https://t.co/9todhBIr8s

[Alec Stapp @AlecStapp]

Vaccines are the greatest biomedical innovation of all time:

[George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway3d]

“Every American knew, or should have known. The man elected president last night is a depraved and brazen pathological liar, a shameless con man, a sociopathic criminal, a man who has no moral or social conscience, empathy, or remorse. He has no respect for the Constitution and laws he will swear to uphold, and on top of all that, he exhibits emotional and cognitive deficiencies that seem to be intensifying, and that will only make his turpitude worse. He represents everything we should aspire not to be, and everything we should teach our children not to emulate. The only hope is that he’s utterly incompetent, and even that is a double-edged sword, because his incompetence often can do as much as harm as his malevolence. His government will be filled with corrupt grifters, spiteful maniacs, and morally bankrupt sycophants, who will follow in his example and carry his directives out, because that’s who they are and want to be.”

[George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway3d]

We are engulfed by depravity. But it’s more important than ever not to succumb to it.

[David Frum @davidfrum]

Big win for post-liberal politics and economics. Also for measles, mumps, polio, and tooth decay.

[Alex Cole @acnewsitics]

Democrats: First black president. First female vice president.

Repulicans: First convicted felon president.

[Mike Carlton @MikeCarlton01]

America…it’s like watching the Fall of Rome. There is no other democracy, from Norway to New Zealand, which would elect as its leader a rapist, felon, liar, ignoramus, misogynist, vindictive bully and charlatan.