Viruses are weirder, worse, & more preventable than you realize Rachel Thomas PhD rachel.fast.ai/posts/2023-0... @math-rachel.bsky.social

A great blog post by @math-rachel.bsky.social on this preprint describing failures of an ML approach for gene annotation:
rachel.fast.ai/posts/2025-0...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

"how challenging (or even impossible) it can be to evaluate AI claims in work outside our own area of expertise"

Two (conflicting) executive orders were made this week:
- freeze on comms from scientific & health agencies
- investment in medical AI w/ bold promises

These highlight common misunderstandings & obfuscations about the relationship between data, AI, & power

My post rachel.fast.ai/posts/2025-0... 1/

What AI can tell us about microscope slides: classifying cancer cells, predicting prognosis, and identifying genetic mutations that may drive treatment choices.

My latest post is a friendly introduction to Foundation Models for Computational Pathology: rachel.fast.ai/posts/2025-0... 1/

"With LLMs the main uses are to produce outputs that are extremely similar to the training set. But the point of computational drug design is to deal with cases that are new... Copying from what we know already will only get you so far." -- @dereklowe.bsky.social

www.science.org/content/blog...

Nature Method of the year for 2020 was Spatial Transcriptomics and for 2024 it is Spatial Proteomics.

Sounds like this is the decade for spatial -omics!

Single cell profiling obscures profound spatial heterogeneity.

Even if these 4 samples had the same proportions of cell types, the spatial arrangement is vastly different.

@lochlanfennell.bsky.social #multiomics2024 1/

Spatial biomarkers are associated with immunotherapy response & can help treatment decision making

Tumor cell subtyping of non-small cell lung cancer found 5 distinct tumor clusters which differed in outcomes

-- Ettai Markovits of NucleAI kicking off computational bio session #multiomics2024 1/

The Lego theory 😀

Role of viruses in triggering Type 1 Diabetes:

- viruses theorised as trigger of islet autoimmunity
- both cases & controls show peptides unique to them
- differential immune response to same viruses
- Rather than infection with a specific virus, may be triggered by how the immune system responds

Forget livetweeting we are now live illustrating!!!! #headandneck #multiomics2024

Many cancers have multiple oncogenes. Does it matter if they are in the same cell or not?

-- Anand Jeyesekaran kicking off the Immuno-Oncology session for #multiomics2024 🧵 1/

We need to consider the "cell sociology" of the direct communications of cancer cells, the regions & neighborhoods, and the broader tumor microenvironment. -- Angela Ferguson

1/ 🧵 from #multiomics2024

Such an interesting read from @math-rachel.bsky.social who has a remarkable gift for making complex topics (like AI ∩ immunology) accessible as well as engaging -> rachel.fast.ai/posts/2024-0... #biosky #medsky

This year I focused on how AI is being applied to immunology. These applications include predicting T cell binding, mapping immune communication networks, and discovering new antibiotics. Here is a round-up of my writing on AI + Immunology:

rachel.fast.ai/posts/2024-1... 1/

The human immune system is impressive, but so are the mechanisms pathogens use to evade it. In my new post, I cover 5 surprising and ingenious ways that viruses & bacteria can subvert our defenses. 1/

rachel.fast.ai/posts/2024-1...

Hype around AI in medicine often ignores two key risks:
- patterns of automation contribute to centralization of power
- medical knowledge is limited by the systemic refusal to trust patient expertise

rachel.fast.ai/posts/2024-0...

Even though my main interests are immunology & AI, I was pleasantly surprised to learn several fascinating facts about insects in my microbiology classes last semester!

rachel.fast.ai/posts/2024-0...