Manish Butte
manishbutte.bsky.social
Manish Butte
@manishbutte.bsky.social
Pediatric immunologist specializing in inborn errors of immunity, T cell Immunologist, Professor and Division Chief, UCLA Dept of Pediatrics, Microbiology / Immunology, and Human Genetics
Cool advance in the epigenetics of Lamarckism. I wonder if a recent history of infections in fathers-to-be can be encoded in the epigenetics of sperm and passed down as well (e.g., microRNAs or chromatin organization at interferon response genes after viral infection).
Male mice that exercise can pass their newly gained fitness on to male offspring.

If the same holds true in humans, researchers say, fathers could help improve the health of any future children by staying in shape themselves. https://scim.ag/47igpZm
Well-exercised male mice appear to pass fitness to their male offspring
Surprising epigenetic effect relies on snippets of RNA packaged within sperm
scim.ag
October 13, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Melissa Lechner's group at UCLA identified both CD4+ (Tfh) and CD8+ (Tc1) T cells as drivers of the autoimmune diabetes that arises after anti-PD1 therapy, and showed the nonspecific JAK inhib ruxolitinib could prevent it! Wow. My suspicion is that targeting IFNg-STAT1 alone probably is enough.
Polyfunctional T follicular helper cells drive checkpoint-inhibitor diabetes and are targeted by JAK inhibitor therapy @jci-insight.bsky.social
insight.jci.org/articles/vie...
July 9, 2025 at 5:16 PM
One the many advances in this incredible paper by Columbia's Milner and Izar labs shows that GOF variants in PIK3CD are not all that rare, including p.M285T that occurs in 1/8000, and is correlated with autoimmune diseases. There are many more APDS patients lurking out there! #IEI #raredisease
June 21, 2025 at 2:47 PM
New antifungals are much needed -- 41 of these patients receiving olorofim had coccidioidomycosis. #valleyfever
June 18, 2025 at 4:06 PM
Reposted by Manish Butte
⚠️ Effective Monday 2/10/25, NIH indirect rate capped at 15%. Applies to existing & future grants.

—> Deep budget cuts & program closures coming to a university near you.

Is this the break the glass moment for university administrators who have been silent so far about the attack on science?
NOT-OD-25-068: Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Grants Policy Statement: Indirect Cost Rates
NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts: Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Grants Policy Statement: Indirect Cost Rates NOT-OD-25-068. OD
grants.nih.gov
February 7, 2025 at 11:33 PM
Bravo to Paul Bollyky @pbollyky.bsky.social at Stanford for his lab's paper showing that complementary groups of phage can be mixed to provide broad and effective antimicrobial therapy against Pseudomonas and Staph infections. Brilliant work!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A blueprint for broadly effective bacteriophage-antibiotic cocktails against bacterial infections - Nature Communications
The application of phage therapy for multidrug-resistant infections is mainly limited to personalized therapy due to the narrow host range of individual phages. Here, Kim et al. identify groups of pha...
www.nature.com
December 4, 2024 at 10:01 PM