My teen students want to be the #JulesVerne of genomics 🚀 writing our own #ScienceFiction MITxBio 7.00x, 7.28.1x-2x, 7.QBWx certified, former ballerina 🩰🧬💫
Aix-en-Provence, France
Joined March 2010
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SpaceAix and former Elon Musk school have been teaching creative writing for over a decade, asking students to write their own science-fiction 🚀💫
Now moving to Chinese-speaking fictional and non-fictional world 🇨🇳
To become a multi-planetary species 🚀 humanity will need to become a multi-omics 🩺🧬species first
medium.com/biomedical-chroni…
SpaceAix retweeted
🇧🇷 Après 30 ans de recherches, cette scientifique a développé un traitement qui pourrait aider à réparer la moelle épinière ! Tatiana Coelho de Sampaio a mis au point une substance qui pourrait favoriser la repousse des connexions nerveuses endommagées et aider certaines personnes paralysées à retrouver une partie de leurs mouvements. 💪 (Folha De S.Paulo)
📸 Paula Ferreira
SpaceAix retweeted
⠀
JIMMY CARTER: THE PRESIDENT WHO BEAT THE ODDS AT 91
On Aug. 20, 2015, a former president told reporters his cancer had spread. Jimmy Carter was 90. Melanoma had reached his liver and his brain.
He knew the disease's toll. His father died of pancreatic cancer in 1953. So did all three of his younger siblings.
Doctors at Emory used radiation and a new immunotherapy drug, pembrolizumab, approved by the FDA less than a year earlier. It unleashed his own immune system on the tumors.
That December, at 91, he announced his scans showed no cancer.
He lived nine more years and died Dec. 29, 2024, at 100. A new kind of drug got its most famous patient.
ALT Official portrait of President Jimmy Carter in a navy suit and striped tie, smiling, with the American flag behind him.
SpaceAix retweeted
“If we can predict the [protein's] shape, we can design a drug that recognizes the harmful form and leaves the healthy one alone.”
A Hopkins-led team backed by up to $52M from @ARPA_H will build an AI model to decode how proteins misfold in Parkinson’s, cancer, and other diseases. bit.ly/4zMyCdb
SpaceAix retweeted
The science of aging with one of its top researchers, Vadim Gladyshev @gladyshev_lab, and optimism for slowing biological aging
with transcript, open-access, w/ links to his many recent papers
erictopol.substack.com/p/vad…
SpaceAix retweeted
KEYNOTE-C93: pembrolizumab alone vs carboplatin/paclitaxel, first line, dMMR }#endometrialcancer, stage III to IV or recurrent, including carcinosarcoma. N=299.
PFS: median 38.2 vs 8.4 months, HR 0.57. At 3 years, 53% vs 30% progression-free. OS: HR 0.77 (0.52 to 1.15), not significant.
The OS result is explained by subsequent lines as most patients on chemo alone would get immunotherapy at progression. So survival may depend less on whether IO comes first, and more on whether the patient gets it at all.
That turns this into a different question: what does the patient gain by skipping chemo? No alopecia, no neuropathy, no 6 cycles of carboplatin/paclitaxel. For many dMMR patients, that's worth a lot.
The catch: about 20% progress by the first scan on pembro alone. Those are the patients chemo-IO would have held.
How I'll use it: pembro alone for the patient who wants to avoid chemo, or is frail, with low-volume disease. Chemo-IO for bulky, symptomatic disease where I can't afford early progression.
One detail to check: resected stage IVB with no visible disease was allowed. I want PFS split by measurable disease at baseline.
What we need now: a way to identify the early progressors before we start, and results by MMR mechanism, MLH1 hypermethylation vs MMR gene mutation. #gyncsm #ESMO26
@myESMO
SpaceAix retweeted
Looking forward to this conference today! Signed up to attend virtually.
fda.gov/industry/fda-rare-di…
SpaceAix retweeted
🦟❗️ Le nombre de cas autochtones d'infection à virus du Nil occidental dépasse désormais la barre de 200, répartis dans 8 régions.
C'est largement inédit : le précédent record était de 62 (l'an dernier).
Parmi ces 201 cas, 40% de formes neuro-invasives graves et 6 morts.
1/2
SpaceAix retweeted
I flew home from a cancer congress yesterday with notes on a couple of trials that might extend people's lives. This morning I saw a patient I can't give any of them to.
That's the shape of this job, and I think people picture it differently.
The headlines read: breakthrough, first ever or practice-changing. And some genuinely is when a drug doubles survival in stomach cancer.
Then you come back to clinic. And the person in front of you has the wrong mutation. Or the right mutation, but the drug isn't available yet and you’re waiting for an early access program.
Or, most often, their cancer is one of the many where nothing from last week applies.
Every oncologist carries both at once: real, accelerating progress, and a waiting room where most of it isn't available yet.
But if you're living with cancer and wondered why nobody has offered you any of this: it isn't that your doctor hasn't heard from it. It's usually that the breakthrough was for someone else's cancer, or hasn't reached here yet.
Staying on top of the science is one part of the job, waiting for the drug to be available is another part. And it’s the way harder one…
SpaceAix retweeted
My book is in the news!!! I’m thrilled that @victoriabuzzes has an article about Murder at the Otter Cove Market! They even shared that it includes the perspective of a cancer warrior! Book launch this Sunday! ♥️
#fuckcancer #yyj #BookTwitter 🇨🇦📚✍️
victoriabuzz.com/2026/10/vic…
SpaceAix retweeted
Anti-VEGF in breast cancer has a graveyard. Bevacizumab won approval on PFS in 2008, never improved overall survival, and lost the indication in 2011. No survival, no biomarker, real toxicity.
So an 80% response rate with a PD-1/VEGF bispecific in first-line #TNBC earns both attention and memory. Ivonescimab plus chemo in @NatureMedicine : PFS 9.4 months, mostly in PD-L1-low disease where checkpoint blockade usually fails.
The shift is the logic. VEGF blocked to lift immunosuppression so the PD-1 arm works, not to starve the tumor, both targets in one molecule. But single arm, 35 patients, and it has to clear the bar bevacizumab never did: overall survival. Phase 3 decides whether anti-VEGF in breast earns its place or repeats its history.
#bcsm
nature.com/articles/s41591-0…
SpaceAix retweeted
It was a privilege to be part of the 13th OncoWisdom discussion, What’s New in Lung Cancer from WCLC 2026?
My appreciation to Dr Amol Akhade for the opportunity and for an engaging discussion with several new perspectives.
9 take-home messages that stayed with me:
• Bullish on ivonescimab
• The appetite for PCI is shrinking
• The next decade belongs to SCLC
• Rethinking thoracic RT in the era of newer therapies
• ctDNA/MRD after 3 years of adjuvant osimertinib
• Lessons from EVOKE-03
• The increasingly impressive ROS1 TKI space
• Impressive T-DXd PFS in HER2-mutant NSCLC
• Exon 20ins is heterogeneous — where the insertion sits matters
@SuyogCancer
@StephenVLiu
@LauraAlderMD
@TejasPatilMD
@g_mountzios
@ullas_batra
@karansood
#LungCancer #ThoracicOncology #MVOnco
SpaceAix retweeted
#ESMO26
The drugs we’ve been enthusiastically discussing for the past three days:
Divarasib, Ivonescimab, Sonesitatug vedotin, Intismeran autogene, Tarlatamab, Zanidatamab, Izalontamab brengitecan, Gedatolisib, Giredestrant, Rilvegostomig, Torvutatug samrotecan, Savolitinib.........
OS, PFS, HR, new standards of care, changing treatment algorithms...
Then, for a moment, I returned to reality.
I can’t even offer a single one of these drugs to my patients!!!
Anyway, tomorrow we’ll be back to discussing which drug is going to change our clinical practice🤦♂️
SpaceAix retweeted
WHAT MAKES IVONESCIMAB DIFFERENT? 🧩
🔴 Pembro + Bev → two separate antibodies → two independent grip systems.
🟢 Ivonescimab → ONE bispecific molecule with 2 PD-1 + 2 VEGF binding sites = TETRAVALENT.
Think of each binding site as a “hand” or grip.
More simultaneous connected grips
→ harder to let go
→ AVIDITY ↑
And here is the interesting part:
VEGF binding → strengthens PD-1 binding
↕️
PD-1 binding → strengthens VEGF binding
That mutual reinforcement = COOPERATIVE BINDING 🔗
In vitro:
• VEGF present → >18× ↑ PD-1 avidity
• PD-1 present → >4× ↑ VEGF affinity
🧠 MEMORY LINE:
Separate antibodies = independent grips
Ivonescimab = ONE connected multi-grip system.
Hands are a teaching analogy for binding sites. Fold changes represent in-vitro mechanistic data, not clinical effect sizes.
📚 Zhong T, et al. iScience. 2025;28:111722.
#Ivonescimab #LungCancer #NSCLC #Immunotherapy #PD1 #VEGF #BispecificAntibody #ThoracicOncology #MedicalOncology #Oncology #CancerResearch #MVOnco
SpaceAix retweeted
ESMO 2026 presidential 2 | HARMONi-GI1: Ivonescimab beats durvalumab in advanced biliary tract cancer!
Phase III trial (n=682): Ivonescimab (PD-1/VEGF bispecific antibody) + gemcitabine/cisplatin vs durvalumab + gemcitabine/cisplatin in 1L advanced BTC.
📊 Key results:
✅ Median OS: 14.9 vs 12.1 months (HR 0.75; p=0.0031)
✅ Median PFS: 8.4 vs 5.8 months (HR 0.61; p<0.0001)
✅ ORR: 53.8% vs 32.5% (p<0.0001)
✅ Manageable safety profile; no new safety signals.
🔥 25% reduction in risk of death and 39% reduction in risk of progression!
A rare head-to-head phase III victory against an established immunotherapy standard in BTC.
Could PD-1/VEGF bispecific antibodies replace conventional PD-L1 inhibition in first-line BTC? @OncoAlert @myESMO
#ESMO26 #BiliaryTractCancer #Oncology
SpaceAix retweeted
We already know that ivonescimab is effective. However, something else caught my attention on this slide.
In the control arm, 7% of patients received “Traditional Chinese Medicine” as subsequent antitumor therapy, compared with only 0.6% in the ivonescimab arm.
What exactly are these treatments? Have they demonstrated any survival benefit, or is their efficacy no better than placebo?
And the crucial question: Could this imbalance have influenced OS, given the substantially higher use in the control arm?
Have similar treatments been reported in other randomized oncology trials?
#ESMO26
SpaceAix retweeted
One antibody, two targets at once. It’s quietly becoming one of the most powerful ideas in oncology.
A normal antibody grabs one target. A bispecific antibody is engineered with two grips, so a single molecule hits the cancer cell twice at once. The latest example is ivonescimab, and it just did something rare: it beat pembrolizumab head-to-head.
Its two grips are PD-1 (the immune brake) and VEGF (the tumour’s blood supply).
This year’s Phase 3 lung cancer data showed a survival edge over standard immunotherapy.
Caveats: much of the data is from China and needs global confirmation, and it has to replicate. But the bispecific idea is the real story with many more to come.
