Immunology & AI | @banajabri lab graduate | @TheXavierLab postdoc @broadinstitute | Cell Therapy and AI @AstraZeneca

Washington, DC
Joined June 2014
1/ Keen to share the story of my postdoc research in @TheXavierLab! We built a massive resource characterizing the spatial landscape of the gut, and yes, we dug deep into the biology too. If you’ve got a minute, let me walk you through the story. 🧵👇 nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
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Toufic Mayassi retweeted
Introducing Omanta (YC S26) the personalized research lab for each patient. Omanta integrates a patient's full medical record, personal genomics, and the latest scientific evidence to understand the molecular drivers of their disease. It maps existing and emerging therapies against their biology. And when the right treatment doesn't exist yet, it launches a personalized campaign to build it. Even the hardest cases rarely have a team dedicated to solving them. Physicians make high-stakes calls with limited time, while data and therapies emerge every week. Science moves fast, but reaching the patient can take years. That's the gap Omanta was built to close. Founders Alfredo Gonzalez, PhD and Ranad Humeidi, PhD spent years on some of the most difficult cancer cases. Alfredo led the personalized therapeutic campaign behind Sid Sijbrandij's complete remission. Together they've worked with leading institutions on personalized vaccines, CAR-T, drug repurposing, expanded access, and continuous molecular monitoring. They've seen what becomes possible when the full force of modern science is organized around one person. They met eight years ago doing early CRISPR cancer research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Alfredo Gonzalez (CEO) has a PhD in bioinformatics from UCLA and led research projects across the Broad Institute, UCLA, and Harvard. Ranad Humeidi (CSO) has a PhD in chemical biology from Harvard, and has built and run rare-cancer programs for individual patients when standard options ran out. omanta.com A research lab, for one. Linked-in: bit.ly/omanta-linkedin YC Launch: bit.ly/omanta-yc
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Toufic Mayassi retweeted
I’m thrilled to share our new @Nature study revealing a previously unrecognized neuro–epithelial circuit that actively regulates intestinal type 2 immunity. If you’re interested in sensory neurons, chemosensory tuft cells and type 2 immunity, this one’s for you. (1/6)
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Toufic Mayassi retweeted
Our most recent work on sphingolipids is now published in @cellhostmicrobe! cell.com/cell-host-microbe/f… Here we discovered a mechanism by which bacterial sphingolipids in outer membrane vesicles promote anti-inflammatory responses in immune cells, through activation of the mevalonate pathway and cholesterol biosynthesis, which was essential for IL-10 secretion. This discovery was the product of many years of teamwork with @emilytemple_, and others in the @TheXavierLab and Clary Clish's metabolomics group at the @broadinstitute. Here’s a thread on what we found, how we found it and and why it matters 🧵👇
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Mouse gut blueprint: regionality and resilience dlvr.it/THdlNS #immunology
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Toufic Mayassi retweeted
My book, An Intuitive Primer on Effective Functional Genomics Study Design, is published! I’d really appreciate it if you could help spread the word, and I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback. It’s available on Amazon: tinyurl.com/mx2hewen
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The intestine maintains a delicate balance in the body. This equilibrium is disrupted in parts of the organ in some diseases, but scientists don’t fully understand why. Now, researchers have created a blueprint of the gut that could address these questions broad.io/ImmuneSystem-Intest…
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Toufic Mayassi retweeted
Huge congrats to Toufic and all! Been fortunate to witness this incredible piece of work come together over the years and all the hard work behind the scenes which led to so many surprising and interesting findings. Such as there is a very distinct middle colon region with specialized epithelial cells whose function is regulated by a microbial-ILC2 interaction 🤯🤯 This is also a great one stop shop for all your gut intestinal gene expression questions! Just ask @TouficMayassi I’m sure he’ll happily look up your favorite gene, who expresses it, how it changes with microbiota, circadian rhythm and inflammation across the whole gut in every cell. Or just pull all the data yourself it’s been made publicly available. 👇
1/ Keen to share the story of my postdoc research in @TheXavierLab! We built a massive resource characterizing the spatial landscape of the gut, and yes, we dug deep into the biology too. If you’ve got a minute, let me walk you through the story. 🧵👇 nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
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Toufic Mayassi retweeted
1/3 Thrilled to share exciting new work in @Nature by @TouficMayassi, @li_chenhao, Åsa Segerstolpe, et al. Spatial profiling of mouse intestine reveals a landscape robust to perturbations in homeostatic drivers & adaptable in a spatially-restricted manner bit.ly/48ZzJKc
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Toufic Mayassi retweeted
It was such an experience working on this large-scale dataset and most importantly in the team with diverse backgrounds. I have learned so much from @TouficMayassi and other members of @TheXavierLab.
Replying to @TouficMayassi
6/ Next challenge - reconstruct the tissue to its native state and unify segments within and across mice to facilitate downstream analysis and visualization. Enter the room @li_chenhao, a brilliant scientist that helped me supercharge the study along with my computational skills.
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21/ This work represents years of effort shaped by the guidance of mentors, support of colleagues, and encouragement from family and friends. Grateful to everyone who contributed, directly or indirectly. Excited to keep exploring the mysteries of the gut! Until next time...
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22/ Processed data and scripts can be found at tinyurl.com/4fsxwcc6 Data can also be viewed on the Single Cell Portal tinyurl.com/ykmajssf tinyurl.com/56wh3x9t tinyurl.com/2mjftsc3 Read more about the story here: tinyurl.com/5epdfrma
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