Rod Rahimi
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rodrahimi.bsky.social
Rod Rahimi
@rodrahimi.bsky.social
Physician-Scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Posting about biology (mostly immunology) and medicine

https://www.rahimi-lab.com
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Hello Friends, I created a 5th #immunology Starter Pack. If you're an immunologist and you don't see yourself on the lists, let me know 🧪

go.bsky.app/PY5tCas

go.bsky.app/FmERUoD

go.bsky.app/6aT6qDS

go.bsky.app/QSEPDoj

go.bsky.app/Mdbpk7h
Friends, it's fun to see the #immunology community continue to grow! I created a 4th Starter Pack to help folks find each other. If you're an immunologist and you don't see yourself on the lists, let me know 🧪

go.bsky.app/PY5tCas

go.bsky.app/FmERUoD

go.bsky.app/6aT6qDS

go.bsky.app/QSEPDoj
Friends, the second #immunology starter pack filled in 3 days! I started a third to help folks new to BlueSky rebuild their network

Below are the links

If you're an immunologist and I have missed you so far, let me know 🧪

go.bsky.app/PY5tCas

go.bsky.app/FmERUoD

go.bsky.app/6aT6qDS
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
If you are submitting an NIH grant in February, you will be required to use SciENcv to prepare you biosketch.

IT IS MUCH WORSE THAN YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE.

Set aside *at least* 4 hours just to transfer an existing an biosketch into SciENcv.
January 6, 2026 at 11:29 PM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
💥New paper alert!💥 What’s better than starting 2026 with an @annualreviews.bsky.social #Immunology, often a once-in-a-life honor ❤️?! Check it out if you want to know everything about type III interferons #IFN! Thanks to my wonderful team for their amazing work 🤗 doi.org/10.1146/annu...
Molecular, Cellular, Tissue, and Organismal Functions of Type III Interferons
Type III interferons are essential immune mediators playing pleiotropic roles during health and disease. In this review, we highlight the molecular and cellular pathways that lead to the production of...
doi.org
January 5, 2026 at 5:50 PM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
@drjonlim.bsky.social & @reisesousalab.bsky.social show cDC1s & DNGR1 favor "tethered" neoantigens from F-actin proteins, trapping them in necrotic debris for better cross-presentation! Calls for prioritizing these neoantigens for cancer vaccine design #Immunotherapy www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Cross-presentation of dead cell-associated antigens shapes the neoantigenic landscape of tumor immunity - Nature Immunology
Here the authors show DNGR-1 expressed by cDC1s promotes CD8⁺ T cell priming to cytoskeletal neoantigens from dying tumor cells, thereby shaping cancer immune visibility and tumor evolution through im...
www.nature.com
January 2, 2026 at 7:19 PM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
Absolutely delighted that our latest paper is out today @natimmunol.nature.com. It has taken five years to uncover a role for cross-presentation in shaping the immune visibility of tumour antigens. A labour of love led by @drjonlim.bsky.social and Oliver Schulz. Great start of 2026!
Researchers at the Crick have uncovered how certain proteins that become exposed on dying tumour cells can be detected by the immune system, alerting it to the cancer’s presence and prompting an immune response.

www.crick.ac.uk/news/2025-12...
Lifting cancer’s invisibility cloak
Dying tumour cells alert the immune system to fight cancer.
www.crick.ac.uk
January 2, 2026 at 5:26 PM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
New @science.org today
Discovery of a genomic variant that protects against blood cancer by reducing risk of CHIP (blood stem cell mutation clones, common with aging)
@bloodgenes.bsky.social
@kharaslab.bsky.social
science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Inherited resilience to clonal hematopoiesis by modifying stem cell RNA regulation
Somatic mutations that increase the fitness of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) drive their expansion in clonal hematopoiesis (CH) and predispose individuals to blood cancers. Population variation in t...
science.org
January 1, 2026 at 7:03 PM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
The @natureportfolio.nature.com published a really good spotlight on #influenza two weeks ago. I have not read all the articles yet (but I will). The ones I have read are great, learned a lot. Highly recommend checking them out. #IDSky
www.nature.com/collections/...
Influenza
Every year, there are about one billion cases of influenza globally, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths.
www.nature.com
December 31, 2025 at 2:37 PM
It's always difficult to pick one favorite paper from the past year, but this one is on my short list. Very elegant experiments that changed the way I think about peripheral tolerance. #Immunology 🧪
Regulatory T cells constrain T cells of shared specificity to enforce tolerance during infection
During infections, CD4 Foxp3+ regulatory T (Treg) cells must control autoreactive CD4 conventional T (Tconv) cell responses against self-peptide antigens while permitting those against pathogen-derived “nonself” peptides. We defined the basis of ...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
December 31, 2025 at 7:17 PM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
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...
Medical breakthroughs in 2025
... and a happy new year.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev
December 28, 2025 at 6:37 PM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
'The presence of CD8+ T cells coexpressing residency and exhaustion molecules in chronic diseases often correlate with clinical outcomes; however, the relationship between these cells and conventional tissue-resident memory (TRM) cells or exhausted CD8+ T (TEX) cells is unclear.'
#Immunology
Tissue-resident exhausted and memory CD8+ T cells have distinct ontogeny, function and role in disease - Nature Immunology
Here the authors show that persistent antigen stimulation drives the generation of CD8+ tissue-resident exhausted T cells with distinct developmental origins, function and therapeutic responsiveness w...
www.nature.com
December 30, 2025 at 11:49 PM
“Joel F. Habener, a Harvard University academic whose research paved the way for revolutionary weight-loss drugs Ozempic, Mounjaro and others…died Sunday in Newton, Mass. He was 88.”🧪🩺

I didn’t realize the discovery of GLP-1 started with anglerfish
Joel Habener, Whose Research Helped Develop Weight-Loss Drugs, Dies at 88
Habener led research that discovered the GLP-1 hormone, a key ingredient in Ozempic and Mounjaro.
www.wsj.com
December 30, 2025 at 9:03 PM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
CNS delivery systems are getting better
'Tividenofusp alfa, comprising iduronate-2-sulfatase fused to an engineered transferrin receptor–binding Fc domain, has been developed to treat neurologic and peripheral manifestations of mucopolysaccharidosis type II (MPS II), a rare lysosomal disorder'
An Intravenous Brain-Penetrant Enzyme Therapy for Mucopolysaccharidosis II | NEJM
Tividenofusp alfa, comprising iduronate-2-sulfatase fused to an engineered transferrin receptor–binding Fc domain, has been developed to treat neurologic and peripheral manifestations of mucopolysa...
www.nejm.org
December 30, 2025 at 2:35 AM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
I highly recommend this book. For those whose picture of Darwin is a white-bearded old man sitting in his British study, this will blow your mind. Watch him ride across the pampas with the gauchos in the midst of a revolution and you'll learn his life was a radical as his ideas 🧪
7/ The Voyage of the Beagle, by Charles Darwin. Here lie seeds of his theory of evolution, but it’s the portrait of a complex man that resonated most. Far ahead of his time yet still stuck with some questionable views & not shy of riding on the backs of tortoises. www.goodreads.com/book/show/18...
Voyage of the Beagle
s/t: Charles Darwin's Journal of Researches When the Be…
www.goodreads.com
December 21, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
#WeekendRead! #SmartTumor #EveryCellIsAnImmuneCell! Levy & (many) friends show @cp-cell.bsky.social that melanoma tumors release large extracellular vesicles #melanosomes decorated with MHC-I & high affinity tumor associated antigens which subvert cytotoxic T cells! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
HLA export by melanoma cells decoys cytotoxic T cells to promote immune evasion
Melanoma cells escape immune surveillance by releasing MHC-antigen-loaded large EVs, known as melanosomes, that directly engage and impair CD8+ T cell receptors.
www.cell.com
December 20, 2025 at 3:50 PM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
Two pieces of fun news:

1. We've launched a new website for our lab: www.brysonlab.org

2. With some new funding, we are recruiting for new postdocs and graduate students. The projects build upon our previous studies of antigen presentation and phagosome biology and go into new exciting dimensions!
The Bryson Lab | Vaccine Development & Research at MIT
Developing effective accessible vaccines to end tuberculosis worldwide. Combining immunoengineering, molecular microbiology & systems biology at MIT.
www.brysonlab.org
December 18, 2025 at 6:29 PM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
So structural biology is not dead after all 😋 Not a big surprise The title of this article is exactly in line with what I think.
Same applies to LLMs for scientific writing.
AlphaFold predictions are valuable hypotheses and accelerate but do not replace experimental structure determination - Nature Methods
An analysis of AlphaFold protein structure predictions shows that while in many cases the predictions are highly accurate, there are also many instances where the predicted structures or parts of pred...
www.nature.com
December 14, 2025 at 4:18 PM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
Taking advantage of a natural experiment, this follow-up by @pascalge.bsky.social of their earlier study in Nature on the beneficial effects of shingles vacination on dementia. Very cool stuff!

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
The effect of shingles vaccination at different stages of the dementia disease course
A natural experiment found that herpes zoster vaccination reduced the occurrence of mild cognitive impairment and deaths due to dementia, indicating that the vaccine may slow the progression of dement...
www.cell.com
December 12, 2025 at 11:12 AM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social A critical role of the transmembrane anchor in perforin-2 in DCs, and reveal that pore formation occurs with striking spatiotemporal precision to safeguard the integrity of endocytic compartments
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @patrycja-kozik.bsky.social
December 9, 2025 at 2:11 AM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
We’re hiring! Two postdoctoral research positions are available in our lab - one in mucosal immunology, and one in exposome immunology (MRC CoRE)! Apply by December 22nd!🎄

Position 1: tinyurl.com/2mh44tn4
Position 2: tinyurl.com/5ffzxsfb

@kiroxford.bsky.social @exposomeimmunology.bsky.social
Job Details
tinyurl.com
December 9, 2025 at 5:13 PM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
Practice changing plenary #ASH25‼️

Iron is hypothesized to feed infxn & IV iron often avoided in that setting.

>85k people hospitalized w/5 most common bacterial infxns, compared those who recvd IV iron to those who did not.

🩸greater hemoglobin increase
🩸lower mortality at 14 & 90 days
December 6, 2025 at 6:46 PM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
Darwin's regrets:
"If I had to live my life again I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect and more probably to the moral character"
December 5, 2025 at 3:01 AM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi
“Since SCID is caused by a faulty gene, scientists collect babies’ stem cells and, in the lab, introduce a healthy copy, using a harmless, disabled form of H.I.V. as the courier. (While the virus can’t replicate, it is still excellent at integrating its genetic cargo into cells’ D.N.A.)”
She Was Born Without an Immune System. Gene Therapy Saved Her Life.
www.nytimes.com
November 27, 2025 at 1:54 PM
This is fascinating

“Furthermore, these findings raise questions about whether anti-PD-1 blockade during cancer immunotherapy provides a short-term anti-tumour effect at the cost of diminishing efficacy due to progressive loss of these critical high-affinity precursors.” #Immunology
Inhibitory PD-1 axis maintains high-avidity stem-like CD8+ T cells @nature.com #Germain @niaidnews.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
November 26, 2025 at 10:18 PM
Reposted by Rod Rahimi