Benjamin Ostendorf
@ostendorflab.org
Physician scientist @ChariteBerlin.
Interested in tumor immunology, systems biology, and cancer biology.
Lab website: www.ostendorflab.org
Interested in tumor immunology, systems biology, and cancer biology.
Lab website: www.ostendorflab.org
Pinned
Liver-X-receptor agonism enhances T cell priming and activation to promote anti-tumor immunity
Ostendorf et al. show that activation of liver-X-receptors preconditions T cells to render them more receptive to adopting effector states upon activation.
doi.org
Delighted to share our new paper on LXR agonism pre-conditioning T cells to more readily adopt effector states, out in @jem.org today. This was a long project started in @sohailtavazoie.bsky.social's lab and completed across the atlantic here in Berlin at Charité.
Thank you, Ariën!
February 10, 2026 at 9:51 PM
Thank you, Ariën!
Reposted by Benjamin Ostendorf
@ostendorflab.org, @immushuang.bsky.social, @sohailtavazoie.bsky.social et al. show that activation of LXRs elicits a T cell "pre-effector" state that enhances priming and promotes anti-tumor immunity. rupress.org/jem/article/...
#TumorImmunology
#TumorImmunology
February 10, 2026 at 5:04 PM
@ostendorflab.org, @immushuang.bsky.social, @sohailtavazoie.bsky.social et al. show that activation of LXRs elicits a T cell "pre-effector" state that enhances priming and promotes anti-tumor immunity. rupress.org/jem/article/...
#TumorImmunology
#TumorImmunology
thank you christian!
February 10, 2026 at 4:10 PM
thank you christian!
Huge thank you to all who contributed to this, particularly @sohailtavazoie.bsky.social , @immushuang.bsky.social, Bsky-less Jonathan Goldstein and all other co-authors. Also thank you to our funders, including @bihatcharite.bsky.social, Deutsche Krebshilfe, @dfg.de, DGIM and others.
February 10, 2026 at 3:39 PM
Huge thank you to all who contributed to this, particularly @sohailtavazoie.bsky.social , @immushuang.bsky.social, Bsky-less Jonathan Goldstein and all other co-authors. Also thank you to our funders, including @bihatcharite.bsky.social, Deutsche Krebshilfe, @dfg.de, DGIM and others.
Interestingly, we found that LXR activation induces a state in T cells that renders them more receptive to adopting effector states upon activation; this pre-conditioned state is quite fascinating and may be relevant beyond cancer.
February 10, 2026 at 3:39 PM
Interestingly, we found that LXR activation induces a state in T cells that renders them more receptive to adopting effector states upon activation; this pre-conditioned state is quite fascinating and may be relevant beyond cancer.
Given their highly variable abundance, we now asked whether LXR agonism also works in tumors with low levels of g-MDSCs. This was indeed the case - and the effect was immune-mediated despite only very scarce g-MDSCs.
February 10, 2026 at 3:39 PM
Given their highly variable abundance, we now asked whether LXR agonism also works in tumors with low levels of g-MDSCs. This was indeed the case - and the effect was immune-mediated despite only very scarce g-MDSCs.
In Sohail's lab, we had previously found that LXR agonism enhances anti-tumor immunity by depleting granulocytic MDSCs.
LXR/ApoE Activation Restricts Innate Immune Suppression in Cancer
Therapeutic harnessing of adaptive immunity via checkpoint inhibition has transformed the treatment of many cancers. Despite unprecedented long-term r…
www.sciencedirect.com
February 10, 2026 at 3:39 PM
In Sohail's lab, we had previously found that LXR agonism enhances anti-tumor immunity by depleting granulocytic MDSCs.
Delighted to share our new paper on LXR agonism pre-conditioning T cells to more readily adopt effector states, out in @jem.org today. This was a long project started in @sohailtavazoie.bsky.social's lab and completed across the atlantic here in Berlin at Charité.
Liver-X-receptor agonism enhances T cell priming and activation to promote anti-tumor immunity
Ostendorf et al. show that activation of liver-X-receptors preconditions T cells to render them more receptive to adopting effector states upon activation.
doi.org
February 10, 2026 at 3:39 PM
Delighted to share our new paper on LXR agonism pre-conditioning T cells to more readily adopt effector states, out in @jem.org today. This was a long project started in @sohailtavazoie.bsky.social's lab and completed across the atlantic here in Berlin at Charité.
Reposted by Benjamin Ostendorf
📣 We’re hiring! Pls share!
Join my lab to study human antigen-specific B cells across vaccination & infection backgrounds & explore their plasticity.
Passionate about B cells, cutting-edge immunology, molecular biology & bioinformatics?
📄Details & apply: karriere.charite.de/stellenangeb...
⏳ Feb 28
Join my lab to study human antigen-specific B cells across vaccination & infection backgrounds & explore their plasticity.
Passionate about B cells, cutting-edge immunology, molecular biology & bioinformatics?
📄Details & apply: karriere.charite.de/stellenangeb...
⏳ Feb 28
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin/ Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (d/w/m) /DoktorandIn
Teilzeit | 28.02.2026 | Campus Virchow-Klinikum, Wedding
karriere.charite.de
February 10, 2026 at 1:17 PM
📣 We’re hiring! Pls share!
Join my lab to study human antigen-specific B cells across vaccination & infection backgrounds & explore their plasticity.
Passionate about B cells, cutting-edge immunology, molecular biology & bioinformatics?
📄Details & apply: karriere.charite.de/stellenangeb...
⏳ Feb 28
Join my lab to study human antigen-specific B cells across vaccination & infection backgrounds & explore their plasticity.
Passionate about B cells, cutting-edge immunology, molecular biology & bioinformatics?
📄Details & apply: karriere.charite.de/stellenangeb...
⏳ Feb 28
Reposted by Benjamin Ostendorf
“We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.”
Props to Anthropic for studying the effects of their creation and reporting results that are not probably what they wished for
www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...
Props to Anthropic for studying the effects of their creation and reporting results that are not probably what they wished for
www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...
How AI assistance impacts the formation of coding skills
Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.
www.anthropic.com
January 31, 2026 at 3:50 AM
“We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.”
Props to Anthropic for studying the effects of their creation and reporting results that are not probably what they wished for
www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...
Props to Anthropic for studying the effects of their creation and reporting results that are not probably what they wished for
www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...
A fascinating finding on the therapeutic potential of targeting non-coding regions of MYC!
Does the noncoding genome actually carry more genetic information than coding seqs? Motivated by this question we mutated every bp in the 10kb MYC locus. Results are even more exciting: Decoding the MYC locus reveals a druggable ultraconserved RNA element www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
www.biorxiv.org
January 31, 2026 at 8:04 PM
A fascinating finding on the therapeutic potential of targeting non-coding regions of MYC!
Reposted by Benjamin Ostendorf
New post!
There was a lot of innovation in medicine and biomedical research this year, and I've tried to summarize the biggest ones in this blogpost.
Medical breakthroughs in 2025. Plus a serious note at the end.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/medical-br...
There was a lot of innovation in medicine and biomedical research this year, and I've tried to summarize the biggest ones in this blogpost.
Medical breakthroughs in 2025. Plus a serious note at the end.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/medical-br...
Medical breakthroughs in 2025
... and a happy new year.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev
December 28, 2025 at 6:37 PM
New post!
There was a lot of innovation in medicine and biomedical research this year, and I've tried to summarize the biggest ones in this blogpost.
Medical breakthroughs in 2025. Plus a serious note at the end.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/medical-br...
There was a lot of innovation in medicine and biomedical research this year, and I've tried to summarize the biggest ones in this blogpost.
Medical breakthroughs in 2025. Plus a serious note at the end.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/medical-br...
Completely agree! Now I mainly wish for Prism and Flowjo replacements...
I'm a longtime fan of Affinity Designer as an affordable Illustrator-killer for figures, and... it's now free?! www.canva.com/newsroom/new...
Highly recommended if you're sick of paying Adobe $. Maybe Canva can buy NPG too and get rid of the OA fees.
Highly recommended if you're sick of paying Adobe $. Maybe Canva can buy NPG too and get rid of the OA fees.
Why we made Affinity free, and how we’ll keep it that way
We’ve made Affinity completely free, empowering professional designers with studio-grade creative software, supported by Canva’s sustainable ecosystem.
www.canva.com
November 19, 2025 at 11:49 AM
Completely agree! Now I mainly wish for Prism and Flowjo replacements...
Reposted by Benjamin Ostendorf
Friday Papers Club! 🍿In light of Pubmed going down, the collapse of social media, and my recent success at getting recommendations for interesting papers from those still around, I am starting a new tradition! - Recommend a good scientific manuscript! 👇
October 3, 2025 at 9:10 AM
Friday Papers Club! 🍿In light of Pubmed going down, the collapse of social media, and my recent success at getting recommendations for interesting papers from those still around, I am starting a new tradition! - Recommend a good scientific manuscript! 👇
Reposted by Benjamin Ostendorf
For our #flowcytometry peeps, would you like to have a single fix/perm protocol that is optimised for everything? One that preserves fluorophores while allowing simultaneous TF and cytokine staining? How about 100-fold cheaper?
You got it:
currentprotocols.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
You got it:
currentprotocols.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
currentprotocols.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
September 19, 2025 at 2:39 PM
For our #flowcytometry peeps, would you like to have a single fix/perm protocol that is optimised for everything? One that preserves fluorophores while allowing simultaneous TF and cytokine staining? How about 100-fold cheaper?
You got it:
currentprotocols.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
You got it:
currentprotocols.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Reposted by Benjamin Ostendorf
Doomscrolling pause to chat CRISPR libraries! Preprint describes our new, data-driven approach to combine on-target and off-target predictions much more intelligently for *selecting* guides, which we use to develop our newest Cas9 knockout library, Jacquere. Thread: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Balancing off-target and on-target considerations for optimized Cas9 CRISPR knockout library design
The continued development of high-dimensional CRISPR screen readouts, such as single-cell RNA sequencing and high-content imaging, necessitates compact libraries to enable functional interrogation at ...
www.biorxiv.org
September 7, 2025 at 5:02 PM
Doomscrolling pause to chat CRISPR libraries! Preprint describes our new, data-driven approach to combine on-target and off-target predictions much more intelligently for *selecting* guides, which we use to develop our newest Cas9 knockout library, Jacquere. Thread: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Very interesting! The link leads to the ESPAC5 trial though, correct link here www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
Neoadjuvant FOLFIRINOX versus neoadjuvant gemcitabine-based chemoradiotherapy in resectable and borderline resectable pancreatic cancer (PREOPANC-2): a multicentre, open-label, phase 3 randomised tria...
This randomised trial did not show a difference in overall survival between neoadjuvant
FOLFIRINOX and neoadjuvant gemcitabine-based chemoradiotherapy in patients with resectable
or borderline resecta...
www.thelancet.com
September 11, 2025 at 10:52 AM
Very interesting! The link leads to the ESPAC5 trial though, correct link here www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
What a great thread on budgeting for an academic lab!!
🧵How to write and manage your first research budgets
The point of funding is to convert it into quality research. A well-spent research budget should fund the idea it was raised on, plus revision experiments, plus preliminary data for the next grant. So you need to spend, while avoiding waste.
The point of funding is to convert it into quality research. A well-spent research budget should fund the idea it was raised on, plus revision experiments, plus preliminary data for the next grant. So you need to spend, while avoiding waste.
September 3, 2025 at 7:24 PM
What a great thread on budgeting for an academic lab!!
Reposted by Benjamin Ostendorf
🧨Exciting new pre-print 🧨 Introducing ppmSeq - cost effective, scalable dual-strand 🧬🧬 sequencing. Scalability & ultra-low error in one! A game changer for somatic genome discovery science and cfDNA clinical apps. Check out thread for deets!
Highly accurate sequencing OR high throughput? We refuse to choose.
Introducing ppmSeq, a method built to deliver both. Our latest from the @landau.bsky.social lab with Ultima Genomics
👀👀👀
See ⬇️ for a primer on the next frontier of genomics
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Introducing ppmSeq, a method built to deliver both. Our latest from the @landau.bsky.social lab with Ultima Genomics
👀👀👀
See ⬇️ for a primer on the next frontier of genomics
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Paired plus-minus sequencing is an ultra-high throughput and accurate method for dual strand sequencing of DNA molecules
Distinguishing real biological variation in the form of single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) from errors is a major challenge for genome sequencing technologies. This is particularly true in settings whe...
www.biorxiv.org
August 14, 2025 at 6:11 PM
🧨Exciting new pre-print 🧨 Introducing ppmSeq - cost effective, scalable dual-strand 🧬🧬 sequencing. Scalability & ultra-low error in one! A game changer for somatic genome discovery science and cfDNA clinical apps. Check out thread for deets!
Reposted by Benjamin Ostendorf
Karolinska is looking for 20 (!!) assistant professors and offering 6 year appointments with ~1M USD startup packages.
ki.se/en/about-ki/...
ki.se/en/about-ki/...
Call for 20 Assistant Professor positions
Karolinska Institutet is a world-leading medical university with a long and proud history of ground-breaking research. We are now recruiting outstanding early-career researchers with particularly exce...
ki.se
June 25, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Karolinska is looking for 20 (!!) assistant professors and offering 6 year appointments with ~1M USD startup packages.
ki.se/en/about-ki/...
ki.se/en/about-ki/...
Reposted by Benjamin Ostendorf
Different modes of resistance to RAS inhibitors unveiled by dual Erk reporters that monitor erk activity in the nucleus and the cytoplasm. Cool new paper led by Markus Morkel and Oleksandra Aust www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reporter-based screening identifies RAS-RAF mutations as drivers of resistance to active-state RAS inhibitors in colorectal cancer
A cell-sorting approach reveals distinct modes of cancer resistance to active-state RAS inhibitors.
www.science.org
July 22, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Different modes of resistance to RAS inhibitors unveiled by dual Erk reporters that monitor erk activity in the nucleus and the cytoplasm. Cool new paper led by Markus Morkel and Oleksandra Aust www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reposted by Benjamin Ostendorf
We're very happy to invite you to the 𝟑𝐫𝐝 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐂𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐦𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐎𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟗 &𝟏𝟎.
Visit our website ys2c.org for further information.
Visit our website ys2c.org for further information.
June 7, 2025 at 11:43 AM
We're very happy to invite you to the 𝟑𝐫𝐝 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐂𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐦𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐎𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟗 &𝟏𝟎.
Visit our website ys2c.org for further information.
Visit our website ys2c.org for further information.
Reposted by Benjamin Ostendorf
We have an attractive opening for a tenure-track professorship in Single-Cell Systems Biology. Excellent package and infrastructure at @uni-wuerzburg.de Institute of Systems Immunology. Great place to live and work in the heart of the franconian wine region!
jobs.sciencecareers.org/job/673667/j...
jobs.sciencecareers.org/job/673667/j...
junior professorship position (f/m/d) in Single-Cell Systems Biology - Würzburg (Stadt), Bayern (DE) job with Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg - Faculty of Medicine | 673667
The Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg, Faculty of Medicine is offering one junior professorship position (f/m/d) in Single-Cell Systems Biology.
jobs.sciencecareers.org
June 2, 2025 at 9:29 AM
We have an attractive opening for a tenure-track professorship in Single-Cell Systems Biology. Excellent package and infrastructure at @uni-wuerzburg.de Institute of Systems Immunology. Great place to live and work in the heart of the franconian wine region!
jobs.sciencecareers.org/job/673667/j...
jobs.sciencecareers.org/job/673667/j...
Reposted by Benjamin Ostendorf
Presented at #ASCO25:
The addition of encorafenib and cetuximab to mFOLFOX6 chemotherapy improved outcomes in the primary treatment of metastatic BRAF V600E–mutated colorectal cancer.
Full BREAKWATER phase 3 trial results:
The addition of encorafenib and cetuximab to mFOLFOX6 chemotherapy improved outcomes in the primary treatment of metastatic BRAF V600E–mutated colorectal cancer.
Full BREAKWATER phase 3 trial results:
nej.md
May 30, 2025 at 9:05 AM
Presented at #ASCO25:
The addition of encorafenib and cetuximab to mFOLFOX6 chemotherapy improved outcomes in the primary treatment of metastatic BRAF V600E–mutated colorectal cancer.
Full BREAKWATER phase 3 trial results:
The addition of encorafenib and cetuximab to mFOLFOX6 chemotherapy improved outcomes in the primary treatment of metastatic BRAF V600E–mutated colorectal cancer.
Full BREAKWATER phase 3 trial results: