The Maus Lab
banner
mauslab.bsky.social
The Maus Lab
@mauslab.bsky.social
Our group @VHIO helps innovation in oncology by dissecting how aging causes cancer and translating it into improved cancer diagnostics and therapeutics.
When Ning, Francesca & Marc were selected to speak
@senescel.org 2025, they gave it their all, refining every argument and minute.
Their talks put our metabolic bottleneck model of aging on the field’s radar. 👏

What do you think drives tissue aging, the cell or its environment? 🤔
November 11, 2025 at 4:09 PM
Postdoc | VHIO, Barcelona
Immunotherapies succeed in only ~20% of cases.
Help us break resistance by engineering the right environment.
Join the Aging & Cancer Lab 🌍
👉 Apply: vhiovidaprogramme.eu/recruitment/ | mauslab.org
October 21, 2025 at 9:35 AM
📖Culture dishes and in vivo studies are not our only experiments.

As our lab turns soon 3, we keep on testing how to grow a culture where ideas and people thrive.

For anyone curious about the science of teamwork, The Culture Code is a brilliant field guide.
📖 #LabReads
October 16, 2025 at 8:21 AM
📃By integrating single-cell RNA sequencing datasets, Cong et al. characterize the evolution and interactome of hematopoietic niche from embryonic development to aging. #JournalClub

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39698109/
Deciphering the evolving niche interactome of human hematopoietic stem cells from ontogeny to aging - PubMed
Hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) reside within specialized microenvironments that undergo dynamic changes throughout development and aging to support HSC function. However, the evolving cell-cell commun...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
October 9, 2025 at 2:32 PM
Lung cancer reprograms the bone marrow to its advantage.
Hedge et al. ( @miriammerad.bsky.social lab)
show that tumors trigger an NRF2-driven stress response in myeloid precursors, which then suppress anti-tumor immunity. Blocking NRF2 boosts immunotherapy.
#JC
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Myeloid progenitor dysregulation fuels immunosuppressive macrophages in tumours - Nature
An understanding of the molecular mechanisms promoting the generation of immunoregulatory and tumour-promoting monocytes and macrophages is key to breaking the cycle of tumour myelopoiesis and developing more effective myeloid-targeting therapies.
www.nature.com
October 9, 2025 at 12:43 PM
Reposted by The Maus Lab
#CCESumSchool25 Day 2 🧬
• Lectures: Fundamental Research, Patient-centered Research, Proteomics
• Workshop: Patient Involvement
• First Poster Session!

@vhio.bsky.social @nkinl.bsky.social @nct-heidelberg.bsky.social @gustaveroussy.fr @ki.se @zwartlab.bsky.social @mauslab.bsky.social
October 7, 2025 at 7:20 PM
Hear from Aistė Avižaitė, who joined us from Lithuania to explore aging & cancer and grow in translational oncology at @vhio.bsky.social.

▶️https://youtube.com/shorts/q0g6zdywe6s
September 26, 2025 at 8:12 AM
📰 In aging bone marrow, cancerous clones thrive by adapting through mutations. Kang et al. show that giving immune cells the same mutations tilts the balance back—helping them resist exhaustion and fight cancer in this hostile niche. #JournalClub
🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Epigenetic regulators of clonal hematopoiesis control CD8 T cell stemness during immunotherapy
Epigenetic reinforcement of T cell exhaustion is known to be a major barrier limiting T cell responses during immunotherapy. However, the core epigenetic regulators restricting antitumor immunity duri...
www.science.org
September 26, 2025 at 7:25 AM
📰Aging disrupts metabolic supply chains, constraining cell renewal. But how do we detect these shortages? In >5000 patients, Tapio et al. show that low ferritin is the best predictor for bone marrow iron. A study with broad implications. hashtag #JournalClub

🔗 ashpublications.org/bloodadvance...
September 26, 2025 at 7:12 AM
📑Why don’t senescent cells fix their DNA? Daigh et al. (Meyer lab) report that uncoupling mTORC1 from E2F sustains transcription-linked DNA damage in senescence.

#JournalClub

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Uncoupling of mTORC1 from E2F activity maintains DNA damage and senescence - Nature Communications
Persistent DNA damage is a hallmark of senescence. Here, the authors show that senescent cells accumulate DNA damage due to transcriptional stress and are unable to repair DNA damage due to the absenc...
www.nature.com
August 28, 2025 at 3:34 PM
Why do TET2-mutant preleukemic cells outcompete healthy HSCs? Yang et al. show that these cells upregulate MPL (thrombopoietin receptor, TPO-R) signaling, giving a clonal edge; inhibiting this pathway reduces it. #JournalClub
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
TET2 deficiency increases the competitive advantage of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells through upregulation of thrombopoietin receptor signaling - Nature Communications
Clonal hematopoiesis is associated with an increased risk of hematologic and a range of inflammation-related diseases. Here, Yang et al. demonstrate a critical role for aberrant thrombopoietin recepto...
www.nature.com
August 21, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Why do ring sideroblasts arise in MDS? Often via SF3B1-driven mitochondrial iron buildup. Inokura et al. tested TET2’s role: Tet2-deficient mice show systemic iron overload, and anemia. No classical RS, but intriguing parallels.
#JournalClub
www.exphem.org/article/S030...
Impact of TET2 deficiency on iron metabolism in erythroblasts
Sideroblastic anemia is characterized by the presence of ring sideroblasts (RSs), which are caused by iron accumulation in the mitochondria of erythroblasts and are present in both the acquired and co...
www.exphem.org
August 21, 2025 at 3:15 PM
🌱We are delighted to welcome Gloria Ariño from Universidad Europea de Madrid as our third summer intern!🌟

Gloria will explore how aging creates metabolic bottlenecks in the colon and how these shape tumorigenesis.

With Gloria, Laura & Aiste, our summer intern dream team is complete!💪
August 13, 2025 at 7:52 AM
📑Immunotherapy responses differ markedly between MMR-proficient and -deficient colorectal cancers. A scRNA-seq study of 62 patients by ‪@pelkalab.bsky.social‬ et al. (Hacohen lab) reveals key immune–tumor communication differences that may explain this.
#JournalClub

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
Spatially organized multicellular immune hubs in human colorectal cancer
Single-cell transcriptomics-based co-variation analysis of human colorectal cancer identifies a spatially resolved myeloid-rich inflammatory hub that is shared by mismatch repair-deficient (MMRd) and ...
www.cell.com
August 8, 2025 at 11:07 AM
🎯 The Aging and Cancer Lab is not afraid of tough battles — in science or laser tag.

What connects aging and cancer? Can we stop it?

We team up and take aim together at the route causes.. 🔬💥
August 7, 2025 at 10:06 AM
🌱Excited to welcome Aistė Avižaitė from Lithuania’s
@VU_LT
to the lab this summer!

She’ll be studying how chemotherapy alters metabolism in healthy tissues and how this may drive accelerated aging in childhood cancer survivors.

#Aging #Cancer #SummerIntern
August 5, 2025 at 3:10 PM
200 years ago in Barcelona, your 40s meant preparing for death. Today, you might have 40 more years ahead.

But as @sjayolshansky et al. show, most gains came from reducing early death. Further progress depends on tackling aging and its consequences.
#JC

www.nature.com/articles/s43...
Implausibility of radical life extension in humans in the twenty-first century - Nature Aging
In the twentieth century, human life expectancy rose dramatically. Based on the past three decades of observed mortality in the eight countries with the longest-lived populations and in Hong Kong and ...
www.nature.com
August 1, 2025 at 9:45 AM
🌱 Welcome aboard, Laura!

Joining us this summer from @URV_universitat, Laura Boró García will be exploring how aging and chemotherapy disrupt metabolism and epigenetics in the bone marrow. We’re thrilled to have her with us! 🧬🧪

#Aging #Cancer #SummerIntern
July 28, 2025 at 7:56 AM
Longer lives in laboratory conditions may compromise survival in the real world. In a large study on genetically diverse mice, Di Francesco et al. in Jackson Labs show that lifespan extension under caloric restriction doesn’t always improve health.

#JournalClub

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Dietary restriction impacts health and lifespan of genetically diverse mice - Nature
Health effects of dietary restriction are uncoupled from longevity.
www.nature.com
July 25, 2025 at 9:56 AM
Longer lives in laboratory conditions may compromise survival in the real world. In a large study on genetically diverse mice, @DiFrancescoA et al. in @jacksonlab show that lifespan extension under caloric restriction doesn’t always improve health.

#JournalClub
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Dietary restriction impacts health and lifespan of genetically diverse mice - Nature
Health effects of dietary restriction are uncoupled from longevity.
www.nature.com
July 25, 2025 at 9:50 AM
In a preprint, Han et al. from @yibinkang’s lab report that cancer cells in bone metastases hijack iron from bone marrow macrophages that normally support red blood cell production — linking anemia to metastatic progression.

#JournalClub

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org
July 25, 2025 at 7:51 AM
What makes a bag of cells become a complex, intelligent being—and what breaks those rules to cause aging and system breakdown?

Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems offers a toolkit to understand biology, society, and the economy in their native language: systems.

#LabReads 📚
July 24, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Intestinal stem cells (ISCs) with APC mutations outcompete wild-type ISCs by suppressing Wnt signaling in their neighbors - driving colorectal tumor formation.

Exciting work from Vermeulen lab!

Presented by Marc Guasch @JournalClub
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Apc-mutant cells act as supercompetitors in intestinal tumour initiation - Nature
Using experiments in organoids and in vivo in mice, the authors show that Apc-mutant cells act as supercompetitors to initiate the formation of adenomas.
www.nature.com
July 22, 2025 at 3:02 PM
We are all born with blood cells that could turn into cancer. But aging and chemo don’t just damage cells—they differently pick the bad ones. Chemo favors TP53-mutant clones giving rise to therapy-related MDS.
#JournalClub Ning Huang
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Molecular characteristics and clinical implications of TP53 mutations in therapy-related myelodysplastic syndromes - Blood Cancer Journal
Blood Cancer Journal - Molecular characteristics and clinical implications of TP53 mutations in therapy-related myelodysplastic syndromes
www.nature.com
July 7, 2025 at 11:10 AM
Hereditary hemochromatosis related iron overload accelerates age-related cardiac hypertrophy in a mouse model.

Francesca Cogo #JournalClub

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Iron overload exacerbates age-associated cardiac hypertrophy in a mouse model of hemochromatosis - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Iron overload exacerbates age-associated cardiac hypertrophy in a mouse model of hemochromatosis
www.nature.com
July 7, 2025 at 8:14 AM