It’s a startup, so only time will tell if it will catch on and scale, but the technology seems solid

Indeed; we need innovations also in these sectors, such as the zero-emission brakes from #pointzero: www.point-zero.it

Thanks to @erc.europa.eu for funding and publishing support, as well as @ec.europa.eu #NRRP & Giovanni Armenise-Harvard Foundation #CDA. If you made it this far, you may also be interested in our recent @febspress.bsky.social review on this topic: febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... 10/10

This is our second study on Open Research Europe, the @erc.europa.eu platform with transparent post-publication peer review, full open access, and no outrageous fees. I couldn’t be happier with this choice for both me and my student: a real breath of fresh air in today’s publishing landscape. 9/10

Here’s where we stand: I hope this helps others facing the same issue! Our manuscript formally passed peer review, but we're still tackling the reviewers’ remaining concerns (more on this below). Always open to suggestions: this is how science should work, IMHO. 8/10

Running low on options, we learned of Antonella Fidanza's @elife.bsky.social study using sodium butyrate to enhance a similar dox-inducible system. This strategy finally gave us >90% response in hiPSC-CMs—an effective fix, though relying on an epigenetic modulator isn't always ideal. 7/10

With AAVS1 silencing now widely reported, we turned to the CLYBL locus—touted as a better alternative in @plosone.org a few years back (journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...). Even when using insulators as in the original study, we saw mixed results: a glass half full, half empty, once again. 6/10

As we searched for answers, @johanneszuber.bsky.social kindly pointed us to an elegant @cp-cellrepmethods.bsky.social paper using a UCOE to stabilize TRE3VG (doi.org/10.1016/j.cr...). It improved inducibility in hPSC-derived cardiomyocytes, but was still far from perfect in this hard setting 5/10

For years, I suspected that the alternative dox-inducible promoter T11 might help. But between postdoc on other topics and a pandemic, testing had to wait—until Michelle, a master’s student in my lab, took on the challenge. Turns out I was dead wrong: it was worse than standard TRE3VG in hPSCs! 4/10

Turns out, this wasn’t just bad luck: it was a widespread issue, well-known yet rarely reported (as negative results often are). Why does it matter? Robust inducible gain-of-function experiments are crucial for both discovery and translational studies, and hPSCs are the most versatile cell type 310

This issue has frustrated me for a decade! During my PhD, we found that an otherwise excellent dox-inducible system failed to activate in many hPSC-derived cell types—including my favorite: cardiomyocytes. Fig. S7 from our @dev-journal.bsky.social paper 2/10

journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Amazing finding that could have broad implications also for cultivated meat production