Vince Luca

Principal Investigator | Moffitt Cancer Center Department of Immunology | Scientific Director - Center for Antibody & Protein Engineering

[Vince Luca @vinnypeptide]

I am excited to share our @NatureComms paper describing the structure of #LAG3 bound to MHC-II. This project was carried out by @SuperMQQ et al at @MoffittResearch and provides new insights into the mechanism by which LAG3 suppresses T cell activation. https://t.co/8HiBfWeYV7

[Martin Pacesa @MartinPacesa]

This is the worst idea since NFTs

[jack @digiIov]

@claudeai thanks

[Rhett Kovall @KovallRhett]

@statnews $100 billion NIH budget would be an incredible boost to biomedical research in the US and that’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the entire US budget.

[Camila dos Santos @caoresco]

We are hiring a postdoctoral fellow to study cellular and molecular mechanisms of cancer initiation, with a specific focus on breast cancer, at St. Jude - please apply or share! https://t.co/8F8VbVXUUp

[Demet Arac @demet_arac]

We are hiring.

[Waggoner Lab @LabWaggoner]

@biorxivpreprint A Cytokine Receptor Signaling Atlas Reveals How STAT Mosaics Fine-Tune T Cell Function
https://t.co/rcVoYGaI3H @Stanford

[Ansu Satpathy @Satpathology]

Human protein-coding genes evolved from old parts - reconfigured domains from ancestral genes. We can screen short-sequence evolution at scale using mutagenesis, CRISPR, etc, but we had no way to do the same for domain-level evolution.

Happy to share our work developing DESynR genes today in @CellCellPress: scalable synthesis and functional screening of thousands of new human genes, built from old parts. DESynR transcription factors outperform native factors and dramatically improve CAR T cell function.

A team effort led by the incredible Oliver Takacsi-Nagy! @parkerici @CancerResearch @TheMarkFdn

https://t.co/aMdINxRdAr

[Vince Luca @vinnypeptide]

Brenden & Tooze is the 🐐

[Mohammed AlQuraishi @MoAlQuraishi]

After a multi-year hiatus I've written a new blog post. It tries to begin answering the question of what a meaningful human life will look like when thinking is best done by machines.

It doesn't directly have to do with proteins or bioML but it does speculate wildly about the biological future of humans. It's a bit absurd, may upset people, and may trigger ridicule. I wrote it because we are living through critical times and shouldn't be shy of considering ideas that may help shepherd us through these times just because they are weird or make us uncomfortable. It's my earnest belief that making space for unconventional conversations, and granting everyone a bit of grace, will increase our odds of not only surviving, but thriving, in the post-AGI era. Enjoy.

https://t.co/zYKNt56gYv

[Bowen Jing @bjing2016]

It’s getting hard to keep track of all the new open-source cofolding models coming out. To help everyone stay up to date, I'm excited to share https://t.co/Gc9PaF6GoY, a PDB-synced leaderboard of open models, updated weekly. All predictions are available to view & download! (1/4)

[Vince Luca @vinnypeptide]

@PatrickHwuMD @Nature I did some digging after I saw this, and the backstory on #thymulin is fascinating. Despite it being discovered in the 70s, no one knows how the thymus produces it, an no known human gene encodes it's sequence (the closest 9-mer peptide is 67% identical).

[Moffitt Cancer Center @MoffittNews]

https://t.co/zgXF6DPuL4

[Eric Topol @EricTopol]

The pro-peptide stacked FDA advisory committee voted to lift the ban for BPC-157, as expected. This ban lifting is baseless and will give the public a sense of legitimacy for a peptide with no clinical trial data to support safety or efficacy

[Sasha Gusev @SashaGusevPosts]

One goal is to get rid of academic bureaucracy. But a major current source of academic bureaucracy is data management and reporting, which conflicts with a different goal: making data and data documentation widely available. How does this conflict get resolved?

[Aaron Cravens @crav1ngcravens]

Today our team at Revel published a paper we've been working towards for several years: the first enzymatic reversal of an aging hallmark in human tissue.

https://t.co/ZdfkNbux4c

[Ellen Carmichael @ellencarmichael]

The most interesting part of the red card saga isn't the ruling. It's how differently Americans and Europeans process the idea that they might have been wronged.

Europeans are fundamentally different from Americans in one particular way: they expect life to be aggravating and at times unfair. It's just a fact of moving through the world. I joke that in Europe, the customer is always wrong. You didn't read the fine print. The only pharmacy in town is closed every other Tuesday for three hours, and even if the times weren't posted, that's still your problem. Too bad if you want the bill, because the waiter's on his union-mandated half-hour smoke break, and you're just going to have to wait.

To quote the great Mark Knopfler: sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug. There's something freeing in that. Things are less in your control, so there's less angst in managing your expectations.

In America, things couldn't be more different. We simply can't accept a wrong left unrighted.

The flight attendant sneezed handing you a drink on your one-hour flight? 15,000 frequent flyer miles. Didn't like your appetizer? A replacement is on the way, and the whole course comes off the bill. There's a reason our interstates are lined with trial lawyer billboards.

Europeans have turned complaining into a continental pastime with no expectation that the universe owes them a remedy for their grief. You gripe about the train being late, your friends nod solemnly and everyone goes back to their apéro. In America, we launch a full-blown investigation of the train system, sue the government (and its contractors) that allowed for the tardiness and hold a Congressional hearing on the state of national infrastructure.

So to an objective observer, the red card shouldn't have happened, and VAR was a travesty. To Americans, our star player shouldn't be unfairly banned from a match we couldn't afford to lose for a card he so obviously didn't deserve.

Who cares that FIFA used a little-used reversal to fix it. Who cares that other people are mad about it. We. Were. Wronged. It was unjust. It must be corrected. We would accept nothing less.

Europeans waxing poetic about the sanctity of the game are, of course, talking about a governing body whose last tournament host was decided via confirmed cash bribes — one that imposed dress codes on women, shrugged off widespread allegations of modern slavery and reconfigured the entire tournament calendar to suit the host country. Which is exactly the point. If you've made peace with all of that, at least enough to watch the tournament four years later, a probationary suspension isn't actually a scandal.

Maybe that's the real divide. Over millennia, Europeans have made peace with being the bug. Americans have never once considered it, and apparently, we're not about to start now.

[Jim Geraghty @jimgeraghty]

"But a goal will not count if a player is offsides."

"When is a player offsides?"

"Whenever anything exciting happens."

[Martin Pacesa @MartinPacesa]

Fantastic write up on what to look out for when testing binders 👏👏👏 I have read many papers showing “impressive” hit rates and affinities which are nowhere near reality because of poorly performed experiments

[Taekjip Ha @taekjip]

We are thrilled to announce an opening for a tenure-track assistant professor in PCMM, Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Immunology! Apply by August 2, 2026.

[Vince Luca @vinnypeptide]

@KovallRhett @RibosomeStudio It needs a little work mechanistically, but the renderings are stunning!