
Assistant Professor at University of Hawai'i at Mānoa @uhmanoa @uhmics 🌺 @NIGMS K99/R00 Fellow, former 🇬🇺 pro cyclist, mom of three + proud #milkwarrior
Honolulu, HI
Joined March 2009
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Lenore Pipes retweeted
Developing and benchmarking one health genomic surveillance tools for influenza A virus in wastewater. By @lpipes & team.
We are happy Twister Casey Riegler was able to lend his expertise to the authors as they prepared sequencing libraries! 🧬
nature.com/articles/s41467-0…
Lenore Pipes retweeted
The EPFL IC School is hiring new faculty in all areas of CS. We also have a focused search in security and privacy. Please apply! The (soft) application deadline is November 1st.
epfl.ch/about/working/facult…
epfl.ch/about/working/facult…
Lenore Pipes retweeted
Two @SOESTnews researchers won NSF EPSCoR Research Fellows awards. Helen Janiszewski will explore fiber-optic seismic sensing for hazard monitoring, while Lenore Pipes develops computational methods to study ancient marine DNA from sediments ➡️ hawaii.edu/news/2026/09/18/j…
Getting ready to teach this fall again reminds me how impressive last year's students were. Will Little built a lightweight enhancer classifier with only 1.6M parameters, reaching 83.1% accuracy and its attention highlighted a known enhancer motif youtube.com/watch?v=DXv4quEo…
I met Alex when we both were invited for a group job interview (yes 😱 group job interview) at UCLA. Despite how stressful and anxiety producing that was, Alex was incredibly friendly+genuine+easy to talk to in addition to being an A+++ stellar scientist at the top of his field
In March 2024, at the age of 35, I was diagnosed with stage IV rectal cancer with a metastasis in my liver. This was a shock: I had no family history, and none of the doctors suspected it. After two years of chemotherapy, radiation, and multiple surgeries, I'm still not cured. Now I'm asking for help to get a personalized cancer vaccine.
This is my story so far.
Following diagnosis, I was treated with total neoadjuvant therapy at UCLA. I had 6 weeks of radiation and chemotherapy (Xeloda). This was followed by 6 rounds of oxaliplatin infusions and Xeloda. I tolerated this unusually well. During this period, I managed to hike up to over 11,000ft multiple times in the Sierras, and I wrote the main text of a 72 author meta-analysis paper and submitted it to Nature where it is still in review.
I showed a good clinical response, and at the end of October I had surgery: I was under for 9 hours, and they cut out a bit of my rectum, 1/3rd of my liver, and gave me a temporary ileostomy. Waking up from this was probably the strangest experience of my life: I felt more machine than man, and I had wild hallucinations form such a large dose of anesthesia.
It took a while to feel OK after that surgery. However, I still had the ostomy. I had that reversed at the end of January in another surgery, which took a greater toll on me than I expected.
I only just started to feel OK again and I got bad news: I got a positive circulating tumor DNA test (ctDNA), the signatera test from natera. Unfortunately, the ctDNA carried on rising, and in July 2025 a new lesion appeared in a lymph node near my liver (periportal).
I was treated with irinotecan and panitumumab infusions, which showed a good response, followed by live MRI guided SBRT radiation treatment to the lesion. However, after finishing this treatment, the ctDNA remained positive and began rising again. I restarted irinotecan and panitumumab infusions, which brought ctDNA back to negative (signatera), although it remained positive on the more sensitive Personalis assay.
During this period I had begun to develop stomach pain and digestive symptoms. Then I collapsed vomiting blood while out in Santa Monica and was rushed to the ER. They found out I had a duodenal ulcer that had bled. I had some blood transfused, and I was sent home to complete an intensive course of antibiotics for H. Pylori infection.
However, after about a week, I started to get very weak. I collapsed again and went back to the ER in an ambulance. They found my hemoglobin was 5g/dL, a dangerously low level (normal is over 13.5). Multiple blood transfusions didn't bring it up and I collapsed again in the night after passing a large amount of blood. They took me to intensive care and performed an emergency endoscopy where they clipped and sprayed the ulcer. Thankfully this worked and I was discharged after another 3 nights in hospital.
Unsurprisingly, nearly bleeding to death wasn't good for me, and my ctDNA began to spike rapidly. I had a PET-CT and it revealed 3 new disease sites in abdominal lymph nodes. I restarted irinotecan and panitumumab infusions after barely recovering from the ulcer incident. This showed an excellent response, with the sites resolving on imaging, although ctDNA remained positive.
I've now started bot/bal immunotherapy, a not yet approved immunotherapy treatment that is the first of its kind to show strong results in my kind of cancer, micro-satellite stable colorectal cancer. This was possible thanks to a donation from an anonymous benefactor and supporter of free and open inquiry in science.
Hopefully this treatment will be effective, but it is unlikely to be enough on its own to prevent future disease recurrence.
I am asking for help to get a personalized neoantigen cancer vaccine, which could substantially increase my chances of surviving this deadly disease that is likely incurable under standard care.
While cancer vaccines have shown promising results, they are not yet approved, meaning one has to pay for the design, manufacture, and administration of the vaccine. The total cost of which is $104,133, beyond my means or those of my family.
Any help would be greatly appreciated! I've started a GoFundMe here: gofundme.com/f/cancer-vaccin…. Please donate and share with anyone who might be interested in helping.
I've carried on working throughout this period and I'm still running a research group in statistical genetics at UCLA. I'm hoping to continue making contributions to science for as long as I can, hopefully longer with your help.
It is not acceptable for senior men to discuss whether a junior woman's institution should "make a clean cut" and then email her boss.
And bows @HawaiiMensVB advance to the @NCAA final 4 in front of a packed stadium of 10,000+ 🎉 #gobows 🤙
Coming out of the aftermath of 🌀#sinlaku Standing in the same place I was 2 days ago. Never seen storm surge this high in Tumon Bay.
hitting peak professor right now: NSF deadline looming, in the middle of a super typhoon, power just went out. me + a hotspot + a dwindling battery 🫠
Back on Guam and it’s my first time since high school helping my mom put up shutters as we prepare for Sinlaku 🌀(“This could be another Typhoon Mawar”) feels oddly nostalgic in a way I never expected
The Pipes Lab is hiring! We're actively recruiting a CS student developer (pipes-lab.pbrc.hawaii.edu/pd…), @uhmics CS PhD student (linkedin.com/jobs/view/43713…) , and Postdoc in Computational & Statistical Phylogenetics (linkedin.com/jobs/view/43711…)
Thanks to @HPU_MBB @coachjnak for all of the schwag and inviting their biggest little fans to team dinner after their W last night ☄️ they also got to meet Derrick Low of Hawaii basketball fame ⛹️♂️ Go sharks 🦈
Saying goodbye to the year that was 2025 from Kauai 👋 Here’s to looking at you, 2026… Excited for the new things to come. Happy New Year, everyone 🥳 2026年もよろしくお願いします。
Lenore Pipes retweeted
Don't mess with ALOHA.
#BRADDAHHOOD x #GoBows















