So proud of our brilliant PhD student Alana Mermin-Bunnell, and thankful for all her work to implement a machine learning follicle counting pipeline.

You know it’s bad when the scientists go outside.

For those in the Boston area, the stand up for science demonstration will be at the capitol this Friday 3/7 12-4. i0.wp.com/standupforsc...

Congrats to Dr Godin who did a great job presenting our work on cat contraception at #Fertility2025. We’ve shown that we can treat kittens with AMH gene therapy before puberty and they will be contracepted at maturity with no adverse effects on hormones! Finally, a non-surgical alternative for pets.

We found that overexpressing FSTL3 in our syngeneic model made the tumors grow faster, promoted a more mesenchymal cancer phenotype, increased myCAF abundance and fibrosis in the TME, and reduced T cell infiltration. 6/n

By examining our mouse models, the TCGA, and our own bank of ascites samples, we found that FSTL3 overexpression was quite common in OVCA, and a very clear prognostic biomarker of shorter overall survival. We could also detect it in the serum of mice, where it tracked with tumor burden. 5/n

This made us wonder if other TGFb superfamily ligand binders/suppressors might also play a role in OVCA immunotherapy resistance. The closest homolog, FSTL3, binds the same ligands activinA and GDF8. And overexpressing it in the FSTKO rescued resistance. 4/n

One combination what was particularly effective in CCNE1-amplified tumors was a combination of anti-PDL1/anti-CTLA4/perxasertib. But some clones would be cured and others were resistant to treatment. We traced it to follistatin: knocking it out restored sensitivity. 3/n

Preprint alert 🚨 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... . I’m pleased to tease this story regarding FSTL3 as a potential biomarker and therapeutic target in #ovariancancer. A thread 🧵1/n .

I was digging for decades-old data to put in a new manuscript (proof that useful data never dies) and found this graphic from my first postdoc and good friend Motohiro Kano. Perfect for when family members ask you what you do on Thanksgiving.