iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

If you (like us) are a bone marrow and human pre-clinical modelling enthusiast, do join our google group : (groups.google.com/g/morerganoids)

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

A huge thank you to everyone involved (too many to call out individually), in particular @yuqi-shen.bsky.social – it’s been a lot of work getting this together, and it’s been fun having such a wonderful partner in crime. Also big thank you to @Sarah gooding for all her guidance on all things myeloma

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

We have a lot of exciting new stuff coming - so watch this space! Including expanded implementations of comBO in multi-organoid, ‘body-in-a-dish’ approaches (teaser here: www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/...).

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

We go on to show that myeloma cells, notoriously difficult to culture in a dish, not only survive but proliferate and expand in comBOs. This enables effective pre-clinical modelling, and identifies a tractable pathway linking tumour growth and inflammatory remodelling of the TME.

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

Importantly, this complexity is achieved without bulk hydrogels — enabling scalable and automatable workflows. This is critical for effective pre-clinical modelling and discovery research.

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

In this work, we close that gap. comBOs are derived from a handful of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and develop into a multilineage haematopoietic and stromal organoid which closely resembles adult bone marrow (as benchmarked by single-cell transcriptomics against adult human bone marrow).

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

Recent papers have tackled aspects of maturing bone marrow organoids (BMOs), but the challenge has been building a single model that captures all these cell types. Without these lineages in a single system, key niche interactions that regulate haematopoiesis can't be faithfully modelled.

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

Another step on the journey towards building human bone marrow in vitro: doi.org/10.1016/j.st... When we published our first version a few years ago (doi.org/10.1158/2159...) the glaring gap was the lack of mature osteolineage (bone forming) cells, adipocytes, and lymphoid cells.

doi.org

Redirecting

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

8 years of funding is an incredible opportunity to get stuck in so very excited to get cracking with some research!

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

A huge and heartfelt thank you to all the wonderful colleagues and friends who have supported me through the highs and lows to get here. There are too many to name (and I'd be afraid to miss someone)... but none of this is possible without people fighting your corner.

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

!!! It's official !! After a very, very long couple of years of rejections and the seemingly impossible task of juggling grant writing with bench work, supervision, admin, paper writing.. very happy to officially start as a @wellcometrust.bsky.social funded group leader at the WIMM

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Reposted by Abs Khan

MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine @imm.ox.ac.uk · 11/09/2025

NEW: Oxford researchers link mini organs to show how immune cells race to the rescue after heart injury 🧪 @abattacks.bsky.social & colleagues linked cardiac and bone marrow organoids with a 3D-printed device to model this complex immune response. Learn more 👇 @rdm.ox.ac.uk | @medsci.ox.ac.uk

imm.ox.ac.uk

Body-in-a-chip approach reveals how immune cells respond to heart injury

Oxford scientists build a connected, ‘multi-organoid’ platform that recreates immune recruitment to the heart, opening new avenues to probe disease and test therapies.

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

As a side note - I didn't think much of a 100km row over the whole month, but 10km in and I must say I am questioning my judgement/fitness/ability...

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

Different flavour of post from me today! A bunch of us in the lab at the @imm.ox.ac.uk are taking up Bone Cancer Research Trust (BCRT)'s June rowing challenge to both raise funds and awareness: www.justgiving.com/fundraising/... Please share/donate if you can!

justgiving.com

HSCB lab rows 100km each for bone cancer research

Help Abdullah Khan raise money to support Bone Cancer Research Trust

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Looking forward to it Zoltan - bring me some home cooking !

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

I loved this course! If Aiden or Natalie are instructing say hi from me!

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Reposted by Abs Khan

Alejo Rodriguez-Fraticelli @alejofraticelli.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

🔥 New Fraticelli lab publication🔥 “Pre-existing stem cell heterogeneity dictates clonal responses to the acquisition of leukemia driver mutations” Now at Cell Stem Cell, with two new figures, in vivo, and sequential mutagenesis data. Performed with the support of Cris Cancer and @erc.europa.eu

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Very kind of you Dianne, appreciated!

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Finally finally a big thank you to everyone who has engaged with and showed an interest in implementing the system. I am hopeful that we can make big strides forward as a community as these types of systems advance. Thank you to patients + funders!

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

. If you're interested in implementing please join: groups.google.com/g/morerganoids Where we help troubleshoot + share protocols etc. And this is the playlist: open.spotify.com/playlist/380... To which the paper was written for everyone out there who writes/works to very specific music.

groups.google.com

Bone Marrow Organoids - Google Groups

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

A lot of the major therapeutic challenges and many interesting questions are around clonal evolution, chemoresistance etc. To address those well we need longer lived, 'stable' cultures - we see a decline in complexity over time in our static cultures. Watch this space!

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

I'll end on quoting @kellystevens.bsky.social 'It's not about how far we've come, but about how far we have left to go.' I hope you will agree this is a big step forward, but there are still challenges that I am excited to tackle (funding pending of course).

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

... you can build in a lot of complexity and work out strategies to retain throughput and scalability.

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

We present what we believe is a highly complex in vitro model that showcases the potential of human organoid systems. By adapting granular microgels pioneered by colleagues in the bioengineering field (e.g. J Burdick and others), I think we also show that...

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Finally that helps us identify an inflammatory pathway (MIF) which we think underpins myeloma mediated inflammation. We show that inhibiting this in myeloma-comBO chimeroids ameliorates markers of inflammation.

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

We then apply this system as a pre-clinical model to study multiple myeloma - showing that we support primary myeloma cells (notoriously difficult to culture ex vivo) and capture hallmarks of their extensive interactions with bone marrow niches.

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

In this manuscript we address these to present comBO: a combined bone and lympho-myeloid bone marrow organoid system (I know the acronym is a bit of a reach, but it's stuck now).

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

(1) Capturing simultaneous lympho- and myelopoiesis in a single culture to better model haematopoiesis. (2) Generating the specialist osteoblastic niche and (3) circumventing the limitations imposed by bulk hydrogel embedding (cost, labour, scalability, automation).

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

On to the science! Despite recent advances in developing bone marrow organoid systems (our own work in Cancer Discovery (2023) and Nature Protocols (2024) + Frenz-Weissner paper (Nature Methods, 2024), the major challenges (as we see them) remained:

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

And of course @bethpsaila.bsky.social for all the support (and patience...). A big thank you to the whole HSCB lab for all the support which most often manifests as pranks/coffee/donuts...

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

... it can still be fun so a huge thank you to everyone who made it so. In particular shout out to @yuqi-shen.bsky.social qi-shen.bsky.social without whose support it would have been impossible to do this. @Sarah Gooding for gentle guidance and excellent collaboration in the myeloma world.

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

First and foremost, a huge thank you to all co-authors. This has been a tricky project to pull together having moved twice + juggling demands of grant writing/trying to set up a research group. With the support of lovely people in an excellent environment @imm.ox.ac.uk ...

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

THANK YOU This has been haunting me circa. 1997… Also I like it, but it’s not a track that does well on endless repeat

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

Thank you for the reminder to revisit this album and listen obsessively for a few days

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Reposted by Abs Khan

ISEH - International Society for Experimental Hematology @isehsociety.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Kick off the new year with cutting-edge science. Join the NIC, Prof. Christoph Klein and @abattacks.bsky.social for their webinar on "Organoids" happening on Wednesday, 8 January 2025! www.iseh.org/ISEHWebinars

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Abs Khan @abattacks.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Definitely attend if you can! Nice to see all the hard work from everyone so nicely presented !!

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