Kane Foster
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kanefos.bsky.social
Kane Foster
@kanefos.bsky.social
530 followers 1.3K following 42 posts
I'm interested in the immune response to cancer. Postdoc at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Broad Institute, Boston USA. I also like sci-fi literature & electronic dance music. he/him
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Reposted by Kane Foster
sheencr.bsky.social
Horrific story of a young woman dying of cancer complications after refusing cancer care under the guidance of her influencer mother who charges £70/y for an annual membership to her site & £195 for a consultation & personalised 12-week programme. Thanks to @profstevegriffin.bsky.social for sharing
Our sister died because of our mum's cancer conspiracy theories, say brothers
Paloma Shemirani’s brothers say she refused chemotherapy because of their mother’s beliefs.
www.bbc.co.uk
June 23, 2025 at 7:18 AM
Reposted by Kane Foster
depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social
it's the 10 year anniversary of a very important study
In 2015, researchers Limb, Limb, Limb and Limb found that British doctors have surnames related to their specialties more often than expected by chance. Reproductive medicine had the largest proportion, with 1 in 52 doctors having specialty-relevant surnames including Horn, Hussey, and Woodcock. Second was Urology, with 1 in 59 related names such as Burns, Waterfall, Ball, and Koch.[96] "Dr Pain" appeared most commonly in general surgery.[96] Specialty Surname frequency Surname examples Cardiology 8 (1 in 213) Hart, Pump, Payne Dermatology 4 (1 in 243) Boyle or Hickey General medicine 63 (1 in 101) Mysore, Safe, Warning General surgery 56 (1 in 91) Gore, Butcher, Boyle, Blunt Paediatric medicine 46 (1 in 119) Boys, Gal, Child, Kinder Plastic surgery 7 (1 in 140) Carver, Mole, Price
June 13, 2025 at 12:10 PM
Reposted by Kane Foster
moorejh.bsky.social
Vibe coding www.wired.com/story/vibe-c... #coding #programming #vibecoding
Vibe Coding Is Coming for Engineering Jobs
Engineering was once the most stable and lucrative job in tech. Then AI learned to code.
www.wired.com
June 12, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Reposted by Kane Foster
guyintheblackhat.bsky.social
There is a false dichotomy drawn between "the ivory tower" and "the real world," and I'm here to report that in a post-industrial society, your real-world economy absolutely hinges on the university.

University towns are factory towns. Universities drive economic activity, not the other way around.
May 18, 2025 at 9:20 AM
Reposted by Kane Foster
nejm.org
A lipid nanoparticle–delivered base-editing therapy was custom designed for an infant with a ureacycle disorder. The affected infant was treated at approximately 7 and 8 months of age. Read the Brief Report: nej.md/42XF03F

#ASGCT2025 #MedSky @asgct.bsky.social
Patient-Specific In Vivo Gene Editing to Treat a Rare Genetic Disease | NEJM
Base editors can correct disease-causing genetic variants. After a neonate had received a diagnosis of severe carbamoyl-phosphate synthetase 1 deficiency, a disease with an estimated 50% mortality ...
nej.md
May 15, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Reposted by Kane Foster
baym.lol
Yesterday, the NIH R35 “Outstanding Investigator” grant to fund scientists in my lab studying antibiotic resistance was terminated for reasons not related to the content of the science, or any actions taken by me or members of my lab
A screenshot of the termination notice showing "Outstanding Investigator Grants" A screenshot of the termination notice with "This award is terminated effective the date of this award, due to unsafe antisemitic actions that suggest the institution lacks concern for the safety and wellbeing of Jewish students." highlighted
May 13, 2025 at 11:37 PM
Reposted by Kane Foster
josh.shapiro.foo
A depressing article about drug pricing for cancer patients, specifically for multiple myeloma. The good news in this case is that generic competition should be coming next year. The bad news is there will be another case jaut like this. www.propublica.org/article/revl...
The Price of Remission
When I was diagnosed with cancer, I set out to understand why a single pill of Revlimid cost the same as a new iPhone. I’ve covered high drug prices as a reporter for years. What I discovered shocked ...
www.propublica.org
May 15, 2025 at 1:12 AM
Reposted by Kane Foster
immunofever.bsky.social
1/ A long standing paradox in my mind (from always seeing immune "strength" or reactivity drawn as a spectrum from immunodeficiency to autoimmunity) was resolved this year at #AAI #Immunology2025. WHY do SO many people have both simultaneously? Each infection brings risk of developing autoimmunity!!
Figure 4 from "How persistent infection overcomes peripheral tolerance mechanisms to cause T cell-mediated autoimmune disease" by Arup Chakraborty
May 11, 2025 at 5:03 PM
Reposted by Kane Foster
cyrilpedia.bsky.social
“The visa fees are so exceedingly high that it makes coming here very difficult for some people. We are fishing for the best scientists in the world. They want to come and work here because we are such an effective country at science, but if we have these high costs, they can and will go elsewhere.”
Is the UK paying the price for world’s most expensive visas? | The Observer
Competing political and economic goals on immigration are resulting in the loss of valuable skills and talent in the UK
observer.co.uk
May 12, 2025 at 10:03 AM
kanefos.bsky.social
Great collection from one of the best paper hounds out there!
May 12, 2025 at 6:05 PM
kanefos.bsky.social
Now this is the future La Guin and Wells imagined
May 9, 2025 at 11:30 PM
kanefos.bsky.social
This is a breakthrough in multi-modal single-cell technology
May 9, 2025 at 2:15 PM
Reposted by Kane Foster
rebrafsim.bsky.social
*pronouncing leo XIV like arXIV*
May 9, 2025 at 10:55 AM
Reposted by Kane Foster
arjunraj.bsky.social
Wow, just implemented the new Cellpose-SAM from @computingnature.bsky.social in NimbusImage and it's *awesome*! Give it a try!
nimbusimage.com
May 7, 2025 at 6:19 PM
Reposted by Kane Foster
natrevimmunol.nature.com
NEW Preprint Watch from Annette Wu & @wenjiang-nano.bsky.social @preprintclub.bsky.social reporting on @biorxiv-immuno.bsky.social preprint by @colinraposo.bsky.social et al. showing that checkpoint blockade drives expansion of exhausted T cell clones that develop functional memory
rdcu.be/ek1kY
Progenitor exhausted T cells contribute to the formation of immunological memory
Nature Reviews Immunology - A preprint by Raposo et al. shows that immune checkpoint blockade drives the expansion of certain clones of exhausted T cells that can develop into functional memory...
rdcu.be
May 7, 2025 at 11:19 AM
Reposted by Kane Foster
maxkozlov.bsky.social
With NIH director Jayanta Bhattacharya dismissing my reporting as "false" and "spreading rumors" hours before releasing a policy that confirmed said "rumors," I feel compelled to respond.

Here's an inside look into how this story was reported. It was a weird one. 🧵

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
On a Nature news article reporting that NIH planned to suspend subawards for foreign collaborations: “No, that’s false. There’s going to be a policy on tracking subawards. The NIH and the government should be able to see where the money’s going.” “I’m really uncomfortable with this conversation, because you’re like, actually spreading rumors that you don’t know anything about. … Nature also is spreading rumors. Halt foreign collaborations, that’s not true.” “We’re working on the policy, Jocelyn. You shouldn’t be reporting rumors. I know there’s leaks all over here, but the leaks don’t actually reflect what’s happening. Don’t write about rumors. It actually makes the things that you and I care about worse. Like it spreads panic.” Later that day, NIH released a policy that halted future subawards to foreign scientists and said they will need to apply directly for money under a system still in development.
May 6, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Reposted by Kane Foster
auditorynerves.bsky.social
British scientists are “over the moon” to be back in the EU’s Horizon funding programme after a 3-year Brexit lockout.

New data reveals they have been awarded about £500m in grants since re-entry.

International isolationism never works well.

🧪🔬⚛️🔭

www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
UK wins £500m in science grants from EU Horizon scheme after Brexit lockout
Exclusive: British scientists ‘over the moon’ with re-entry to funding scheme after losing out for three years
www.theguardian.com
May 5, 2025 at 7:00 AM
kanefos.bsky.social
Really happy to share this amazing story from my talented colleague Felipe Galvez-Cancino and many others. Really interesting work about the nature of anti-tumour immunity in the brain and how it can be modulated, in mice and humans!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Regulatory T cell depletion promotes myeloid cell activation and glioblastoma response to anti-PD1 and tumor-targeting antibodies
Glioblastoma is invariably lethal and responds poorly to immune checkpoint blockade. Here, we examined the impact of regulatory T (Treg) cell depletio…
www.sciencedirect.com
April 24, 2025 at 7:31 PM
Reposted by Kane Foster
jonnyfrazer.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/d42...
Why biotech is booming in Barcelona
World-class research institutes and university hospitals, a culture of groundbreaking science and a thriving investment ecosystem make Barcelona a rising star in the life sciences industry, as these t...
www.nature.com
April 19, 2025 at 10:08 AM
Reposted by Kane Foster
hypervisible.blacksky.app
Nasty work. www.vanityfair.com/news/story/m...
But their defense also hinges on the argument that the individual books themselves are, essentially, worthless—one expert witness for Meta describes that the influence of a single book in LLM pretraining “adjusted its performance by less than 0.06% on industry standard benchmarks, a meaningless change no different from noise.” Furthermore, Meta says, that while the company “has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in LLM development,” they see no market in paying authors to license their books because “for there to be a market, there must be something of value to exchange, but none of Plaintiffs works has economic value, individually, as training data.” (An argument essential to fair use, but that also sounds like a scaled up version of a scenario in which the New York Philharmonic board argues against paying individual members of the orchestra because the organization spent a lot of money on the upkeep of David Geffen Hall, and also, a solo bassoon cannot play every part in “The Rite of Spring.”)
April 17, 2025 at 1:35 AM
Reposted by Kane Foster
md.neuzerl.ing
You call it an ifelse statement, I call it a lightweight, agentic decision module operating within a deterministic inference framework
April 16, 2025 at 3:27 AM
Reposted by Kane Foster
ox.ac.uk
'What’s the problem? Well, pretty much everything. These aren’t species returned from extinction.'

@oxfordgeography.bsky.social's Dr Richard Grenyer argues that extinction is, for the time being, a symptom of our global economic system ⬇️
Why ‘de-extinct’ dire wolves are a Trojan horse to hide humanity’s destruction of nature
Extinction is, for the time being, forever – and a symptom of our global economic system.
theconversation.com
April 15, 2025 at 9:22 AM
Reposted by Kane Foster
jcamthrash.bsky.social
"...remember: your work is an act of resistance. Every experiment, every line of code, every collaboration defies those who would silence science."

Dear US researchers: break the outrage addiction. I survived the besieging of science. So can you www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Dear US researchers: break the outrage addiction. I survived the besieging of science. So can you
As I watch US researchers respond to threats against science, I’m reminded of when scientists in Brazil navigated a similar storm.
www.nature.com
April 14, 2025 at 5:16 PM
Reposted by Kane Foster
alondra.bsky.social
Sobering analysis by @nature.com on the Trump administration's NIH cuts. ~ 800 research projects have been terminated with research on HIV/AIDS, health disparities, transgender health, vaccines and COVID-19 being hit hardest, with some labs forced to close entirely. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
How Trump 2.0 is slashing NIH-backed research — in charts
Nature analyses which fields of science and US states are being hit hardest by grant terminations.
www.nature.com
April 13, 2025 at 10:12 PM