I am so very grateful to my colleagues who nominated me for this year’s Albert Renold Prize of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes. It is lovely to have the work of my lab thus recognized. Thanks to all the young scientists who worked with me over the years. Best, Klaus

ft. M. Abedi, P. Rai, Y. Zhou, C. Liu, I. Johnson, A. Chandra, M. Fasolino, S. Rostami, W. Wang, Z. Min, Y. Li, M. Yu, @atishayjay.bsky.social, V. Lian, M. Silverman, @kkaestner.bsky.social, A. Naji, B. Faryabi & @vahedilab.bsky.social @penngenetics.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

See below - makes sense

It took a long time, but finally our paper on the role of the winged helix transcription factor FOXL1 in the vilification of the intestine is published!

Congratulations to Guoli and the team!

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

The house mouse maintains constant telomere length throughout life Abstract. Telomeres protect the chromosome ends from deleterious DNA damage response and repair activities. In humans, telomerase maintains telomere length

house mouse maintains constant telomere length throughout life url: academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Dear Erik, not sure if you have added me yet to the feed.
If not, here the link to my lab page. Best, Klaus

www.med.upenn.edu/kaestnerlab/

Happy to announce that HPAP now has some 180 human pancreatic analyzed by highly multiplexed CODEX analysis. Thanks to Dr. Powers and the whole HPAP team! Here is the link to the experiment data download page: hpap.pmacs.upenn.edu/explore/down...
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Very proud indeed to have been together on a stage celebrating NIDDK's 75th anniversary at the recent ADA meeting in Chicago with Drs Rogers, Cefalu, Gubitosi-Klug and Kirscher. Always grateful for NIDDK's support of our research! 🧪

@aoxing2.bsky.social

Separation of telomere protection from length regulation by two different point mutations at amino acid 492 of RTEL1 Abstract. RTEL1 is an essential DNA helicase that plays multiple roles in genome stability and telomere length regulation. The ultra-long telomeres of the

Very happy to share the results of a multi-national scientific collaboration on the factors that control telomere length. Hope you like it! Best, Klaus

academic.oup.com/nar/article-...

I was truly honored to contribute as Keynote speaker to the 25th meeting of the European Islet Study Group in Malmo, Sweden. Fantastic meeting, lots of progress on all fronts! See you all next year in Barcelona!

Thank you, Christos, for the shoutout! It was a great honor to be invited as Keynote speaker to the European Islet Study Group conference in Malmo. Great meeting, I learned a lot!

Immune perturbations in human pancreas lymphatic tissues prior to and after type 1 diabetes onset - Nature Communications The status of immune cells within human pancreatic lymphatic tissues during the onset and progression of type 1 diabetes (T1D) is underexplored. Here, by flow cytometry and CITEseq, the authors profil...

What really happens at the onset of type 1 diabetes? The HPAP team profiled the immune system of the lymph nodes near the pancreas, the reservoir of the relevant immune cells. Read more here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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🧪 Postdoc positions open! Fully funded

Two new, NIH funded postdoc positions available. (1) Somatic mutations as primary causes of autoimmune disease and (2) Epigenetic drivers of diabetes in humans. Send CV and names of references to kaestner@upenn.edu

A wonderful day, celebration the recently graduated Dr. Michelle Lee at the UPenn hooding ceremony.

Two new, NIH funded postdoc positions available. (1) Somatic mutations as primary causes of autoimmune disease and (2) Epigenetic drivers of diabetes in humans. Send CV and names of references to kaestner@upenn.edu

Do the islet biology community, we have good news.
Good news- the HPAP islet perifusion dashboard for glucagon and insulin secretion is now live on PANC-DB:

hpap.pmacs.upenn.edu/explore/peri...

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Spark Therapeutics is laying off 337 people, more than half its workforce, starting in May The layoffs at the gene therapy company are part of restructuring of Spark Therapeutics by its owner, Roche Group.

It appears that Biotech is no longer an attractive option 🧪

www.inquirer.com/health/spark...

True indeed. Another problem it considered by the government is that gaps in funding force us to lay off well-trained, efficient people. Even is funding is restored later, these scientists will have moved on, and retraining new staff takes time and impairs research progress

Indeed. Mr Musk lost over 90 billion in the last three months
May be he should focus on his business

One of the most powerful moments of the day came from Emily Whitehead who told the story of how she was the first pediatric patient to receive CAR T-cell therapy for her leukemia at age 5: “I stand up for science because science saved my life. And that’s a fact.” @standupforscience.bsky.social

Amazing that so many people came out!

Great to see thousands at the rally to save science in Philadelphia today! A truly inspiring event!

Yes, I am extremely worried about this. Several universities, including UPenn, are considering or have decided to accept fewer PhD students this year - who will staff the high tech labs and regulatory agencies in the future?

Of course - make the rich richer while taking health care aware from those who cannot afford it

Single-cell multiome analysis supports α-to-β transdifferentiation in human pancreas Spontaneous transdifferentiation of pancreatic glucagon-producing alpha to insulin secreting beta cells has been observed in mouse but not in human islets1. Here, we analyzed the largest single cell d...

Dear Friends,
Happy to share our new preprint which describes the discovery of a new alpha to beta cell transitional cell type in the human pancreas using singe cell multiomic and genetic lineage tracing. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

While it may be true, as claimed by Mr. Bannon, that in the IT industry H1b visas have been abused to bring in cheap labor, in biomedical research progress can only be made by recruitment of foreign fellows. There simply are not a sufficient pool of US born Ph.D.s left who want to work in academia