Radeesha Jayewickreme

PhD Candidate @stanfordimmuno with @HowittLab | Previously with @VirusesImmunity while @Yale '22 MCDB & Econ/Math | Mucosal Immunology & Vaccines

[Hans Clevers @HansClevers]

Daisong Wang and Sangho Lim describe human gut organoids with Peyer's patch M cells. M cells not only transport antigens: like professional antigen-presenting cells, they process and present gluten (the celiac disease antigen) directly to T cells https://t.co/q6Efm59SZi

[Radeesha Jayewickreme @radeeshaj]

Learn about applying to Stanford Immunology! Spread to people interested in applying to PhD programs :)

[Stanford Immunology @stanfordimmuno]

The Stanford Immunology Preview is happening on Fri, Oct 3, 2025. Join us for an open house event for prospective PhD students, designed to facilitate the application process to the Immunology PhD program. https://t.co/uh6YlWvCnU #stanfordimmuno #StanfordImmunology #Admissions

[Radeesha Jayewickreme @radeeshaj]

New work out by one of my favorite budding scientists and coauthored by my lovely brother @teshika!

[Miguel Marin-Rodero, MD @Miguel_Marin_R]

New in @PNASNews !🗞️🆕Perinatally generated regulatory T cells (Tregs) seed visceral adipose tissue and set the metabolic tenor in mice. Early-life Treg layers persist and shape insulin sensitivity later in life! #Perinatal #Tregs #Metabolism #Obesity #Diet

[Radeesha Jayewickreme @radeeshaj]

Meningeal tregs 🤯 some super cool neuroimmunology from a super cool guy! Congrats to the team for this excellent work in @SciImmunology :)

[Miguel Marin-Rodero, MD @Miguel_Marin_R]

New in @ScienceImmunology! 🧠✨ We explored how the brain maintains equilibrium with the immune system. Our focus? The key player in immune tolerance and tissue function regulation: regulatory T cells (Tregs). Let’s dive in! https://t.co/4ZCQRSfLcI

[Stanford Biosciences @StanfordBiosci]

SSRP Applications are open! Apply today: https://t.co/5ZJKgev4V1

Learn more about the program from the Director, participants and program leaders: https://t.co/0jh1MZQjhh

[Radeesha Jayewickreme @radeeshaj]

@karstenhouse_14 is beyond amazing— we apparently started grad school at the same time??? Read his preprint here :)

[Karsten Householder @karstenhouse_14]

Proud to share early work from my 1st year in the Garcia Lab! 🧬 the tldr: in just a few months, we go from computational design —> real cancer-specific T cell engagers!

https://t.co/7GBYDF2Brj

[Hank Green @hankgreen]

lowering drug prices, improving nutritional standards, and reducing pesticide use are causes that could genuinely improve public health. Colorado’s experience with prescription drug importation and pesticide regulation shows that we need leadership willing to stand up to big corporations, and it’s easy to see why RFK Jr.’s bold talk on these issues resonates.

But there are significant concerns about his track record. Beyond his vaccine stance, RFK Jr. has also promoted scientifically unsupported claims about HIV/AIDS, suggesting that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS—a view that has been widely debunked and has caused harm in communities affected by the disease. He’s also pushed conspiracy theories about 5G and Wi-Fi, alleging health risks that extensive research hasn’t supported. These positions reflect a pattern of promoting claims that can erode public trust in critical areas of health, even when the science is clear.

The risk is that, with a track record like this, he could bring these same tendencies to HHS, diverting focus from evidence-based health initiatives. I fully agree that we need reform in areas like drug pricing, nutrition, and agriculture policy—but we need a leader who’ll pursue these reforms with rigorous science and public health as the top priority, rather than personal beliefs or fringe theories. I am disappointed to see this level of support from you. We’re losing our institutions to people who professionally degrade trust in them and that causes real harm. That’s this guys whole bag. Be very careful here.

[Ya'el Courtney, PhD @ScienceYael]

Just watched the full House hearing & testimony of NIH Director Dr. Monica Bertignolli.

A few takeaways:
• the proposed budget, in addition to not increasing for inflation, wants to condense NIH from 27 to 15 institutes. The NIH does not think this is a good idea.

🧵1/?

[Radeesha Jayewickreme @radeeshaj]

https://t.co/rmcPpcvX0U

[Radeesha Jayewickreme @radeeshaj]

I’m sick of pretending science is not political. We have an arduous fight ahead of us, but through committing ourselves to communicating our science, regaining trust with the community, and dismantling the perception of the ‘academic elite,’ maybe we can save our planet & health

[Yejing Ge @yejingge]

Delighted to share our skin transposons paper now online @CellCellPress !#TransposableElements #mobileDNA #Regeneration #Skin #StemCell
https://t.co/J95D8Phtwr

Congrats to outstanding postdoc Ying Lyu and our amazing team YounJoo, Ericka, Richa, @MDA_UTHGrad #proudPI! A big shout out to our incredible collaborators @kchenken , Yue Lu, Taiping Chen, and others @MDAndersonNews .

In our murine model, we saw viral like particles originated from the endogenous retroviruses, accompanied by hair loss and stem cell exhaustion, which can be rescued by antiviral drugs. Very excited about the implications behind these findings, especially how innate antiviral pathways can be leveraged to expose cancer vulnerability #EndCancer. Look forward to the next discoveries!
Full article here: https://t.co/PVtnMJSnkX

[Itai Yanai @ItaiYanai]

There are ~40k postdocs in the US, according to the NIH. While PhD students generally have good support (their committees, external advisors, and classmates), the postdocs do not. To help with this, we're starting the 'Postdoc Night Science' club with a first branch in NYC. ⬇️

[Radeesha Jayewickreme @radeeshaj]

Grateful to have been part of this project in my rotation and to see its progression since joining the lab!

[Radeesha Jayewickreme @radeeshaj]

What drives differences in antibody breadth after vaccination / infection? Check out this new preprint and 🧵from @izumikobara and @blish_lab for the first study in how human NK cell activation can drive these differences in SARS-CoV-2!

[Izumi @izumikobara]

So excited to share the pre-print of my first paper from my PhD with @blish_lab! We looked at correlates of breadth in the peripheral immune response to primary infection with ancestral SARS-COV-2 https://t.co/mNW9dhtQgn

[Radeesha Jayewickreme @radeeshaj]

I may be biased, but the in vitro Tfh-like differentiation induction program designed by my former rotation mentor (and now lab mate!) Izumi gets us closer to further manipulating human in vitro systems for vaccine design and efficacy testing (this is exciting!!!)

[Waggoner Lab @LabWaggoner]

IFN-mediated NK cell activation is associated with limited neutralizing antibody breadth after SARS-CoV-2 infection @blish_lab @izumikobara
https://t.co/Y76cc8Beyi

[The Nobel Prize @NobelPrize]

BREAKING NEWS
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2024 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.”

#NobelPrize

[Radeesha Jayewickreme @radeeshaj]

So excited to see this work from @MiyuMoriyama and team! Especially proud to see promising vaccination strategies for aging populations and achieving cross-reactive local IgA/IgG responses when modeling prior infection + boosting against heterologous H5 HA

[Prof. Akiko Iwasaki @VirusesImmunity]

This time, we developed a nasal booster vaccine for influenza viruses. In this preprint, @MiyuMoriyama et al. show that nasal boosters with unadjuvanted hemagglutinin protein induce sterilizing immunity in mice against flu. (1/)
https://t.co/JYkm9h6xeR

[Radeesha Jayewickreme @radeeshaj]

Calling all prospective Immunology PhD Applicants: Apply to SIRPA & get paired with a current student at @stanfordimmuno to guide you through the admissions process and provide feedback on your Statement of Purpose! https://t.co/iSPrsUQJo5

[Stanford Immunology @stanfordimmuno]

Interested in learning more about our Stanford Immunology PhD program? Join our open house event for prospective PhD students, designed to facilitate the application process. Fri, Oct 4, 2024 at 1-4pm PT. Register at https://t.co/tgsPfB99r7 #stanfordimmunology #phd