Rui Santalla
ruisantalla.bsky.social
Rui Santalla
@ruisantalla.bsky.social
PhD student | Immunology, cancer and TME.
ESR at MSCA Evomet ITN and @joycelab.bsky.social @unil.bsky.social 🧪🧬
Reposted by Rui Santalla
Celebrating our annual international lab dinner 🎉 👨🏽‍🍳 🧑🏻‍🍳

We are so fortunate to have this amazing team of motivated scientists, and very talented cooks 🤩 sharing delicious food & culture from around the world 🌍🌎🌏

Grateful for our #international #team 🇮🇹🇫🇷🇨🇦🇪🇸🇨🇭🇬🇧🇪🇬🇩🇪🇵🇹🇲🇽🇮🇪 - this truly enriches our science 🙏 🙌
September 25, 2025 at 1:46 PM
Reposted by Rui Santalla
How can we reawaken the body’s own anti-viral defenses to fight brain cancer?

Delighted to share our new study where we now answer this question, led by the brilliant @alvarezprado.bsky.social who is now an independent PI at LIH Luxembourg 👏👏

#BrainTIME 🧠🦠🧪
🧵

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
September 3, 2025 at 12:56 PM
Reposted by Rui Santalla
🚨 New paper alert! 🚨 I’m thrilled and proud to share that our latest work has just been published in @science.org! 🎉 🧽

📖 Read our paper here: doi.org/10.1126/sci...

🎬 Watch a summary: youtu.be/MttCA3GGWEM

🧵 Or keep reading for the key points! 🔑 1/19
August 14, 2025 at 6:35 PM
Reposted by Rui Santalla
Happy to share that I’ll be starting my lab as a junior group leader at the Georg-Speyer-Haus in Frankfurt in 2026. We’ll study how transcriptional regulators control neutrophil function in cancer. I’ll be hiring soon (PhD/lab tech), please reach out if you know someone interested!
July 16, 2025 at 7:19 AM
Beyond the (v cool) paper itself, I am intrigued by a few facts:
- 80% (!!!) of never-smoker lung cancer patients are women. Are the molecular mechanisms driving this susceptibility known?
- First time I read about aristolochic acid– in which plants is this compound present? What are these used for?
July 10, 2025 at 3:41 PM
I never thought this was even possible. I have a thousand questions and a few concerns. Fascinating.
June 20, 2025 at 8:40 AM
Reposted by Rui Santalla
Celebrating 2️⃣0️⃣ years of the Joyce Lab 🎉

We had an amazing reunion, bringing together past & present lab members from Lausanne & NYC 🏔️🗽

Huge thanks to everyone who came from around the world, shared science & happy memories and together made this milestone really special 😍

#JoyceLab20 #ProudMentor
June 11, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Reposted by Rui Santalla
Wishing our amazing postdoc @lbejarano.bsky.social continued success and happiness - as she leaves us to start her own lab in Spain 🎉🥳

Leire has been one of the most positive, creative, and kind scientists I've had the privilege to mentor - we shall all miss you so much!

#NewPI 🤩
#ProudMentor 😊
May 27, 2025 at 6:07 PM
Reposted by Rui Santalla
Congratulations to @annagavrilenko.bsky.social, a wonderful scientist in our lab for successfully defending her master's thesis on brain metastasis & completing her MSc degree with flying colours at @unil.bsky.social 🤩🎉

Special thanks also to @ruisantalla.bsky.social her super MSc lab supervisor 🙏
April 8, 2025 at 11:01 AM
Reposted by Rui Santalla
Why do brain metastases resist #immunotherapy — even when the same cancer responds outside the #brain? 🧠🧪💥

We just published a study diving into this question ⏬

Led by an amazing (former) PhD student in my lab —Vladimir Wischnewski 🎉

🧵 1/

@cp-cellreports.bsky.social

www.cell.com/cell-reports...
March 31, 2025 at 12:20 PM
Reposted by Rui Santalla
It’s just bad news all the time now.
February 24, 2025 at 11:11 PM
Reposted by Rui Santalla
“There’s going to be a missing age class of researchers that will reverberate for years.” scim.ag/3ERRLDo
U.S. early-career researchers struggling amid chaos
Uncertain funding, government firings, and distressed universities hit vulnerable groups especially hard
scim.ag
February 24, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Reposted by Rui Santalla
The Trump administration's efforts to slash research funding have US graduate students, postdocs and other early-career scientists fearing for their careers. Some might leave the country -- or abandon research altogether.

https://go.nature.com/43ao2zq
Postdocs and PhD students hit hard by Trump’s crackdown on science
As US federal grants remain frozen and budget cuts loom, anxiety and fear grip early-career researchers.
go.nature.com
February 24, 2025 at 9:39 PM
Reposted by Rui Santalla
Excited to share a new paper from our lab 😀

We investigate the tumor microenvironment - to reveal factors influencing cancer progression & therapy response 🔬🧪

So we naturally wanted to ask - does the gut #microbiome influence brain #metastasis 🦠 🧠?

Massara et al 2025

www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
February 10, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Reposted by Rui Santalla
Devastating for scientists and their research, and everyone who benefits from that research.

I’m not sure if everyone outside academia is aware that a delay or “pause” in grant funding often means the researchers themselves are lost from the field, along with their expertise.
NIH appears to have canceled/postponed all of its study sections—the independent review panels that approve federal grants for health research.

Such grants fund the work/salaries of 300k people at more than 2,500 institutions
All NIH study sections canceled indefinitely. This will halt science and devastate research budgets in universities.
January 22, 2025 at 11:24 PM
Reposted by Rui Santalla
Celebrating the start of the holiday season with our wonderful lab 🎄🎅 🎁

Grateful for this incredible, fun team - and a great year of science together 🤩🙏

Happy holidays!! 🌟🥂❄️🎉
December 9, 2024 at 8:57 AM
Jacco came to Lausanne a few months ago and presented this beautiful story from his lab. I love the additional layer of complexity regarding biological cycles in cancer, beyond (now more common) circadian rhythms
December 4, 2024 at 5:03 PM