@joelsunshine
Biomedical Engineer, Dermatologist, Dermpathologist + Derm Residency Director @johnshopkins.bsky.social interested in medical and science education, gene delivery, immune engineering, and the tumor microenvironment
Excited that this work is finally out! This work explores combinatorial gene delivery of costimulation and proinflammatory cytokines in vivo to force tumors to function as their own APCs jitc.bmj.com/content/14/1...
Tumor virus–induced lineage survival circuit drives Merkel cell carcinogenesis: doi.org/10.1172/JCI2...
Masahiro Shuda provides a Commentary on Lingling Miao et al.: doi.org/10.1172/JCI1...
Excited to see this come out. We put in a lot of work developing a robust database structure to enable bio marker discovery across longitudinal data jitc.bmj.com/content/13/1...
New paper presenting a checklist for reporting mIF/mIHC methods in papers where mIF/mIHC is a primary methodology jitc.bmj.com/content/13/1...
A grant showing the number of projects funded for FY2021 through FY2025. The number for FY2025 lagged behind and did not catch up with 4014 fewer projects funded in FY2025 compared with FY2024.
Here are the results in terms of the number of projects.
The number of funded projects in FY2025 is 4014 fewer than the number for FY2024.
2/3
A graph showing the fraction of annual grant funding committed for NIH for fiscal years 2015 to 2025. The fiscal year 2025 lagged behind but then caught up over the last two months.
The fiscal year ends tomorrow.
Here are results from NIH Reporter downloaded an hour ago.
The total amount of funding committed for FY2025 at this point is 99.0% of that for FY2024. The same difference could be due to a variety of technical factors.
1/3
New JCI paper from our group @pennmedicine.bsky.social on neutrophils in Sweet Syndrome:
www.jci.org/articles/vie...
Worried a bit that this will add another layer of paperwork for every grant, requiring us to justify all the indirect components directly attributable to the grant as written, requiring even more grant support staff than we currently have or adding further to their burden…
Vito Rebecca is part of "3D Spatial and in vivo Interrogation of the Vital Role of Stroma in Mortality in Acral Lentiginous Melanoma," led by Ashley Kiemen with @joelsunshine.bsky.social. 2/3
Paper is now out in its final form. Here is a share link:
authors.elsevier.com/a/1lKJ25OfC1...
Our collab with Ashley Kiemen and Vito Rebecca on "3D Spatial and in vivo Interrogation of the Vital Role of Stroma in Mortality in Acral Lentiginous Melanoma" was funded this year! Feel lucky to be at Hopkins and to get to do good science with these awesome people research.jhu.edu/major-initia...
In these challenging times for our Hopkins researchers, any support can help keep their projects in the right direction.
With 39 Discovery awards ($150K) and 20 Catalyst awards ($100K), our office is providing such support for team science and early-career faculty.
hub.jhu.edu/2025/06/17/j...
Taken together, the expression levels and spatial distribution of Siglec-engaging sialoglycans may play a role in patient prognosis, potentially representing a biomarker of survival that is independent from conventional metrics of an inflamed tumor microenvironment.
And last but definitely not least, 3) if a tumor had more Siglec-ligand expression at the tumor-stroma interface than in the center of the tumor, patients suffered worse overall survival, despite our finding that overall Siglec-ligand expression levels were unrelated to survival.
2) This connection was strongest at the tumor-immune interface, where high siglec-ligand expression was more tightly associated with reductions in effector T cell infiltration.
We used this to investigate the relationship between these Siglec-engaging sialoglycans and melanoma patient outcomes. We identified several key findings: 1) Siglec-ligand expression negatively correlated with CD8 infiltration, aligned with its immunosuppressive role.
In this study, we developed and optimized an immunohistochemistry staining protocol for novel reagents that detect three types of sialic acid binding immunoglobulin-like lectin (Siglec)-engaging sialoglycans, key signature glycans that have demonstrated immunosuppressive roles.
This is very relevant to cancer biology, as there is significant evidence of the "glycoimmune checkpoint", as specific glyco signatures have been identified to be potently immunosuppressive. www.nature.com/articles/nri...
Glycobiology (the study of sugars in biology) is fascinating and relatively understudied. In particular, we have lacked validated tools to study how sugars, which are key components of the extracellular matrix and the surface of cells, impact biological functions in a spatially resolved manner.
Excited that this work is out! "Siglec ligand immunohistochemistry reveals association with immune exclusion and survival" #glycotime www.laboratoryinvestigation.org/article/S002...
Having a device that can measure TEWL remotely, continuously or as programmed by the investigator - and without perturbing a patient during sleep - is a major advance.
#wearabledevices #DermSky
A non-contact wearable device for monitoring epidermal molecular flux
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Add to this, the slow pace of new and competitive renewal awards due to study section and advisory council meeting delays and actual grant terminations, the flow of funds has been reduced and has become more unpredictable.
This is no effing way to run the world’s best biomedical research system.
ICYMI, NIH will be asking soon for each NIH-funded researcher to justify every draw they make (often several times a week) on their grants and every NIH officer and their boss will have to justify their agreeing on these draws.
This is the death of US biomedical research by a thousand cuts
5000 people could be lose their job at NIH very soon (25% of NIH workforce)
.
Positions in both intra and extramural programs are targeted.
Devastating self-harm to this country.
www.statnews.com/2025/03/14/n...
Had a great time at AAD 2025. Particularly proud of our medical students and fellows who presented.
Main takeaways: 1) program signals matter + are more important than geographic preferences for most programs, but 2) importantly, different programs appear to weight gold vs silver signals differently, with some weighting gold signals very heavily and others using them equivalently.
If you are interested in the impact of the new gold and silver signals on the dermatology match process, check out our recent letter in the JAAD (doi.org/10.1016/j.ja...).
Top 10 ways American Science can survive the 15% indirect cap:
1. Breed special transgenic mice that can run for days in tiny hamster wheel turbines to keep lights on.
2. Get athletic program staff to donate 1% of their salaries to the research thus raising 100 billion dollars a year.
