David Usharauli
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davidusharauli.bsky.social
David Usharauli
@davidusharauli.bsky.social
130 followers 16 following 670 posts
Immunologist & biotech startup co-founder (tregeutix.com) on a mission to harness the power of Tregs & microbiota | Calling on visionary investors to join our journey 🚀
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davidusharauli.bsky.social
Interleukin-1β (IL-1β) is secreted primarily by dying monocytes rather than by live bystander monocytes, challenging established models.

#cryopyrin
#pyrin
#immunology
#science

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Single-cell analysis reveals cell death as driver of NLRP3-mediated secretion of IL-1β in human monocytes - Nature Immunology
Lamkanfi, Shirasaki, Izawa and colleagues show that IL-1β release in human monocytes stimulated with lipopolysaccharide or carrying NLRP3 activatory mutations is mostly restricted to cells undergoing…
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November 11, 2025 at 7:58 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
There’s growing talk that personalized cancer medicine is the future usually meaning individualized #cancer #immunotherapy using mRNA or peptide #vaccines. But before that vision makes sense, some key questions about what cancer suppression really is must be clarified.

1/
November 9, 2025 at 11:16 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
The Weekend Tunes

JUNG HYE RIN _Melty Love(샤르르 샤르르)
(South Korea🇰🇷)

Korean trot music sounds like those songs that, when played, signaled everyone to jump up and start dancing at rural weddings in the USSR.

#WorldMusic 🌍 🎧
#MusicUnites ❤️🎵

youtu.be/G-4Oj7ztVyo?...
November 8, 2025 at 9:16 PM
Reposted by David Usharauli
ocmedia.bsky.social
🎬 OC REVIEWS: Caucasian Blues — a fun romp bringing together Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians.

oc-media.org/review-cauca...
Review | Caucasian Blues — a fun romp bringing together Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians
While the ostensibly first true South Caucasian co-production Caucasian Blues falters technically, it makes up for it in humour and sentiment.
oc-media.org
November 8, 2025 at 8:12 AM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
If you fund the same researchers the NIH would have funded anyway, the result is just incremental progress: two papers instead of one.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) @ChanZuckerberg

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AI drives dramatic expansion of Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s funding to end all diseases
Entering its second decade, philanthropy with Facebook fortune has shed social causes and now focuses on ambitious science dream
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November 6, 2025 at 8:04 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
mRNA vaccines have a fundamental issue of generating short-lived immune responses. They are useful as a fast, stopgap approach but not as a vaccination strategy intended to provide lifelong protection with one or two doses.

#science
#mRNA
#vaccine

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Moderna leans on cost cuts, pipeline as vaccine sales dip
Despite quarterly revenue totals that were nearly cut in half compared to the same period last year, Moderna still expects to break even financially in 2028 with the help of more disciplined spending.
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November 6, 2025 at 6:27 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
"Here, we report our finding that manganese ion (Mn2+) potentiates various TLR agonists, leading to robust activation of the TLR pathway"

#TLR
#tumor
#adjuvants
#immunotherapy

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Reprogramming tumor microenvironment via systemic delivery of TLR3 agonist and manganese nanoparticle | PNAS
Toll-like receptor (TLR) agonists, as potent immunostimulatory adjuvants, play a critical role in linking the innate and adaptive immune responses....
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November 5, 2025 at 8:58 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
"In 2014, Gibson promised that the company would develop 100 drugs in 10 years."

outcome:

"The company has not brought any drugs to market"

AI in drug discovery and development

#biotech
#AI

buff.ly/PgfUh3N
Recursion CEO Chris Gibson out as company head after 12 years
Recursion CEO Chris Gibson is out after 12 years as the ambitious "techbio" company positions itself for its next phase of AI drug discovery.
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November 5, 2025 at 8:16 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
It is completely mind boggling to start a biotech in 2024 with $500 million and close it in 2025. No, things did not "change dramatically". This had nothing to do with science and looks like financial engineering.

#biotech
#finance

Arena BioWorks

www.biospace.com/business/are...
Arena BioWorks Folds Less Than Two Years After Launch, Blames ‘Policy Uncertainty’
Arena launched with $500 million in early 2024 to fund basic biological research, from which it planned to spin out dedicated companies to focus on drug development.
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November 5, 2025 at 8:03 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
"Junie, the result of that process, is genetically identical to Lua."

Clones aren’t truly identical, as epigenetic modifications such as methylation and acetylation depend on environmental factors.

#science

Colossal Biosciences @colossal

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Tom Brady cloned his late dog with help from viral ‘dire wolf’ biotech firm - Dexerto
Tom Brady says his new dog Junie was cloned from his late pit bull Lua by Colossal Biosciences, the same firm behind the viral “dire wolf” project.
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November 4, 2025 at 6:31 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
"Cathy Tie left university to found her first biotechnology company at the age of 18."

No, don’t. Study a little first.

#biotech
#science

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
‘Biotech Barbie’ says the time has come to consider CRISPR babies. Do scientists agree?
A company’s plan to edit the genomes of human embryos worries some researchers — but it might reflect the changing attitudes towards the controversial approach.
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November 3, 2025 at 8:54 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
Duchenne muscular dystrophy might have an autoimmune side after all. In mice, CD4⁺ T cells cause heart damage and removing them keeps the heart healthy. Big implications for future DMD treatments.

#Duchenne
#DMD
#autoimmunity
#immunology

buff.ly/EPpinkA
CD4+ T cells fuel the Duchenne cardiomyopathy
Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a X-linked genetic disorder, in which cardiomyopathy represents a major cause of mortality. Although myocardial inflammation and fibrosis are hallmarks of the…
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November 2, 2025 at 7:43 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
The Weekend Tunes

Shohruhxon & Nilufar Usmonova - Yoqasan (I Like You)
(🇺🇿 Uzbekistan)

#WorldMusic 🌍 🎧
#MusicUnites ❤️🎵

youtu.be/-z2n950Zz20?...
November 1, 2025 at 10:40 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
John Glubb argued that the 7th-century rise of the Arab Empire and spread of Islam reshaped Europe by cutting off Mediterranean trade, hastening the fall of cities, and giving birth to the feudal world of the Dark Ages.

#history
#books

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November 1, 2025 at 9:37 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
"About 40,000 dogs are used in U.S. studies every year"

but where are these studies published? I can’t recall a single high-profile paper involving dogs that was so essential as to avoid "compromising cures for both pets and humans."

#science

www.science.org/content/arti...
Facing claims of animal abuse, a major breeder of research dogs will close its pipeline
Ridglan Farms has agreed to stop selling beagles for scientific studies, leaving just one major U.S. supplier
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October 30, 2025 at 6:57 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
Notable discovery: "Tumor cells hijack these macrophages for iron supply, reducing iron availability for erythroblasts, impairing erythropoiesis, and contributing to anemia."

#tumor
#cancer
#anemia

buff.ly/SRc54Va
Tumors hijack macrophages for iron supply to promote bone metastasis and anemia
Tumor cells mimic erythroblasts by hijacking a specialized macrophage population for iron supply, thereby promoting metastasis through enhanced adaptation to hypoxia and contributing to anemia by…
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October 30, 2025 at 6:39 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
Viewing China’s lax attitude toward #animal experimentation and animals in general as an advantage, without realizing the risks, is what led to the emergence of the #COVID19 virus in the first place. Yet the world just moved on as if it never happened.

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China Pushes Boundaries With Animal Testing to Win Global Biotech Race
The research, including creating monkeys with schizophrenia and autism, would face layers of ethical reviews in the US and Europe.
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October 29, 2025 at 7:47 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
China’s DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen AI Beat Rivals in #Crypto Trading Contest

DeepSeek AI gained 126%, turning $10,000 into $22,900, while Alibaba’s Qwen 3 Max doubled its capital to $20,850.

OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro lost nearly 60%..

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China’s DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen AI Beat Rivals in Crypto Trading Contest
Two Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) models, DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen, have taken a commanding lead over their Western counterparts in a live cryptocurrency trading competition, posting…
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October 29, 2025 at 12:16 AM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
when are they going to release data on the mechanisms of rejection in this gene-modified setting? If the 69-gene deletion does not prevent rejection, what target antigens remain?

#immunology
#science

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Man Has Pig Kidney Removed After Living With It for a Record 9 Months
With the demand for human donor organs desperately outstripping supply, scientists are working to see if genetically edited pig organs can bridge the gap.
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October 27, 2025 at 8:05 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
The Weekend Tunes

화사 (HWASA) - 'Good Goodbye' (🇰🇷 South Korea)

The scene in the video reminded me of the Korean TV series When Life Gives You Tangerines, while the chorus brought to mind Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance.

#WorldMusic 🌍 🎧
#MusicUnites ❤️🎵

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe8f...
October 25, 2025 at 8:11 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
Maybe cancer patients who got mRNA COVID vaccines lived longer because they fared better against COVID, not because of any effect on cancer itself. Did the authors account for that?

#cancer
#mRNA
#immunotherapy

buff.ly/DJHBmFY
A surprise bonus from COVID-19 vaccines: bolstering cancer treatment
Patients who got shots of mRNA before starting a type of cancer immunotherapy lived much longer
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October 23, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Reposted by David Usharauli
ralexdc.bsky.social
JUST NOW!!! Trump Admin Announces Its First Russia Sanctions Targeting Major Oil Companies, Calls on Moscow to Immediately Agree to Ceasefire
October 22, 2025 at 8:53 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
Like in biology, machines can learn from each other. By pooling the experiences of many agents, they discovered a new RL algorithm that outperforms human-designed rules on standard and unseen tasks.

#AI

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Discovering state-of-the-art reinforcement learning algorithms - Nature
Nature - Discovering state-of-the-art reinforcement learning algorithms
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October 22, 2025 at 8:52 PM
davidusharauli.bsky.social
Sakaguchi pioneered the Treg field but like Rudensky he’s too technocratic, focused on tools over biology. Tregs form a tripartite system with IL-2 from antigen-specific effector T cells and specific peptides from the microbiota. They don’t work alone.

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New recipe improves creation of cells that could fight most autoimmune diseases
Nobel laureate makes regulatory T cells that last longer in the body, boosting clinical hopes
buff.ly
October 22, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Reposted by David Usharauli
ocmedia.bsky.social
Imprisoned journalist Mzia Amaghlobeli, the founder of Georgian media outlets Batumelebi and Netgazeti, has won the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, the EU’s top human rights award.

🔗 Read more: oc-media.org/jailed-georg...
October 22, 2025 at 11:22 AM