iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Super interesting study showing that dietary fats and ceramides can drive a YAP-mediated revival stem cell fate in CRC www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

PhD opportunity in our lab at @ucl.ac.uk! 🧬 How do colorectal tumours spatially adapt to treatment? Study cancer cell plasticity using organoids, single-cell, & spatial biology. 4 years | Jan 2027 (flexible) | Stipend + UK home fees ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/... Please share!

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

This paper was led by Corinne Molyneux and Rhianna O'Sullivan and supported by many in Tape Lab, plus CRC-STARS collaborators Eoghan Mulholland-Illingworth, Joshua Moore, and Simon Leedham,Raheleh Amirkhah, and Philip Dunne — plus Smita Krishnaswamy and Jeroen Claus, who added their usual magic.

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Together, we propose a causal, spatial mechanism for how inflammatory stromal niches grant non-genetic access to therapy-resistant, metastatic cell fates — and a mechanistic rationale for COX inhibition (aspirin/celecoxib) in both preventing and treating CRC. (7/7)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

PTGS2+ CAFs map an epithelial plasticity gradient with increasing DACH1 in human CRC tumours. Specifically, epithelia <200 µm from PTGS2+ CAFs are revCSC and epithelia >200 µm are proCSC — linking stromal prostaglandin to poor-prognosis cell-fates in vivo. (6/7)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Full factorial analysis revealed that PGE2 is the dominant CAF regulator of CRC cell-fate. PGE2 rapidly and reversibly converts chemosensitive proliferative colonic stem cells (proCSCs) into chemorefractory, pro-metastatic revival colonic stem cells (revCSCs). (5/7)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

We then built a single-cell arrayed CRISPR platform to interrogate native cell-cell communication. By perturbing the CAF secretome and measuring epithelial plasticity response, we identified CAF PTGS2 (COX2), HGF, GREM1, and IL1R1 as regulators of cell-fate. (4/7)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

We developed a way to quantify CAF-induced plasticity in CRC epithelia and found that the transcriptional co-repressor DACH1 marks which cells are susceptible to CAFs: DACH1+ epithelia respond to stromal signals, DACH1– epithelia don't. (3/7)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Dozens of cancer-associated fibroblast (CAF) signals have been described in CRC, but the relative functional importance of each ligand on epithelial biology has been unclear. (2/7)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Why do COX-inhibitors like aspirin and celecoxib help prevent and treat colorectal cancer (CRC)? Our new preprint suggests part of the answer is that they work as ‘anti-plasticity’ drugs. (1/7) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

We are recruiting! We are searching for an exceptional postdoctoral fellow to lead the single-cell phenoscaping efforts of the REWIRE-CAN Cancer Grand Challenge @cancergrand.bsky.social For more information and to apply please visit: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Today, one year on from that failed grant application and Bart’s ‘shall we explore?’ email, I am very proud to share that REWIRE-CAN has been supported by Cancer Grand Challenges. Never give up on an idea you believe in. (8/8)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

In December we pitched the project to the Cancer Grand Challenge committee in New York. At this point we’d spent so much time together that the team felt like a scientific family and I think that came across during the interview. (7/8)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

For the next 9 months we worked together to create our Cancer Grand Challenge proposal. We went through many, many iterations — but learnt something new from every discussion and built something that none of us could ever have conceived alone. (6/8)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

We brought together world-leaders in signalling activators (Bill Sellers, Roger Williams, Madelon Maurice, Steve Wedge) with experts in cancer cell models and signalling dynamics (Karuna Ganesh, Vivian Li, Smita Krishnaswamy) to form team REWIRE-CAN. (5/8)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

These ideas had some striking technical overlap with my unfunded grant proposal so the project fundamentals came together very quickly. Failure of the first grant became information for the next. (4/8)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Our idea was to use novel ‘activator’ drugs to ‘re-wire’ cancer cell signalling. This new class of therapies aim to turn the extreme signalling dependencies of cancer cells against them by hyper-activating signalling. We could also use activators to move cancer cells into vulnerable states. (3/8)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

A few days later 7 new Cancer Grand Challenges @cancergrand.bsky.social were announced. I received an email from my UCL colleague Bart Vanhaesebroeck with an idea on how we might address the ‘Rewiring Cancer’ challenge. (2/8)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

In early-2025 I was reeling from a ‘scored fundable’ grant application that was not funded. I really believed in this grant and knew the ideas were good but the review panel just weren’t into the project and there nothing more I could do. That’s science, but it hurts. (1/8)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Annual lab curry ‘n’ karting. Incredibly privileged to work alongside these wonderful people

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

It's been a HUGE privilege to interview for @cancergrand.bsky.social with the incredible REWIRE-CAN team

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Reposted by Chris Tape

Krishnaswamylab.org @krishnaswamylab.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

(1/N) Thrilled to share that our paper HiPoNet (High dimensional Point cloud Network) to be presented at NeurIPS 2025! HiPoNet treats an entire high-dimensional point cloud as a datapoint! It captures multi-scale geometry and topology of the cloud perform classification and regression tasks.

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Paul Nurse describing the main job of a PI (From ‘The Thinking Game’, 2024)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

Important new paper from @batllelab.bsky.social showing how the KRAS-G12D inhibitor (RMC-9945) triggers rapid stem cell switching in CRC. This switch happens in just a few hours — similar to what we see with tumour cell responses to CAFs. aacrjournals.org/cancerdiscov...

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

All single-cell PTM files from γδ T cells and PDOs can be found here: community.cytobank.org/cytobank/pro...

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

This project was an experimental tour de force from Callum Nattress, Rhianna O'sullivan, Daniel Fowler, Colin Hutton, Petra Vlckova, @vivianlilab.bsky.social, Kerry Chester, John Anderson, @marta-barisa.bsky.social, and Jon Fisher. Thanks to @cruk-cityoflondon.bsky.social for funding. (13/13)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

In summary, these results suggest that γδ T cell multimodal cytotoxicity can buffer γδ T cell signalling from patient-specific cancer cell immunomodulation, allowing γδ T cells from a range of donors to kill chemorefractory cancer cells. (12/13)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

This demonstrates that these lethal, chemoresistant revCSCs cancer cells are therapeutically targetable by cellular therapies. (11/13)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

CRC PDOs comprise an admixture of chemosensitive proliferative colonic stem cells (proCSCs) and chemorefractory revival colonic stem cells (revCSCs). Crucially, stIL-15-γδ T cells can kill PDOs irrespective of stem cell admixture — including chemorefractory PDOs. (10/13)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

To confirm that the anti-B7-H3 antibody was only inducing ADCC and not invoking the putative immune checkpoint properties of B7-H3, we also demonstrated that only a complete IgG — and not an Fc-null IgG — could trigger multimodal killing. (9/13)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Importantly, PDO immunomodulation of γδ T cells correlates with reduce AIC killing (i.e. the more PDOs change γδ T cell signalling, the worse γδ T cells kill). However, when γδ T cells also use AIC + ADCC, PTM signalling was restored and γδ T cells could kill all PDOs. (8/13)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

We found that γδ T cells can kill both MSS and MSI CRC PDOs. However, when γδ T cells only use AIC, γδ T cell signalling converges on the target PDO, irrespective of T-cell donor. This suggests that γδ T cells are immunomodulated by PDOs and ITH is dominant over IDH. (7/13)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

To investigate how γδ T cells from various T-cell donors (IDH) kill cancer cells from a range of CRC patients (ITH) via AIC and ADCC, we performed single-cell signalling analysis of γδ T cells from x4 donors co-cultured with x10 CRC PDOs, +/- B7-H3 mAb (x780 3D cultures). (6/13)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Next, we found that stIL15-engineered γδ T cells can rapidly kill MSI colorectal cancer (CRC) patient-derived organoids (PDOs) in 3D via AIC. Killing could be further increased by inducing ADCC via a novel anti-B7-H3 antibody — demonstrating multimodal cytotoxicity. (5/13)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

First, we found that expressing stabilised IL-15Rα–IL-15 (stIL15) enables γδ T cells to survive in 3D cultures without serum or cytokine support. This is important because many T-cell killing assays are performed in 2D with serum, but tumours are 3D and nutrient-deprived. (4/13)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

To explore this, we performed a systematic single-cell phenoscaping study of >1,000 organoid cultures testing the combinatorial interactions between γδ T cell killing modalities (AIC vs ADCC), γδ T cell inter-donor heterogeneity, and cancer cell inter-tumour heterogeneity. (3/13)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

γδ T cells can kill cancer cells via antibody-independent cytotoxicity (AIC) and antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC), but how this killing varies across T cell donors (inter-donor heterogeneity, IDH) and patients (inter-tumour heterogeneity, ITH) is unclear. (2/13)

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Excited to share our new paper: ‘Phenoscaping Reveals Multimodal γδ T-cell Cytotoxicity as a Strategy to Overcome Cancer Cell–Mediated Immunomodulation’ led by Callum Nattress in collab. with Jonathan Fisher lab (1/13) aacrjournals.org/cancerres/ar...

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

Applications are now open for the @cruk-cityoflondon.bsky.social Black Leaders in Cancer PhD Programme. If you are interested in our project ‘Reprogramming Plasticity in Colorectal Cancer’ feel free to get in touch! www.colcc.ac.uk/2026-blic-ph...

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Excited to be in Essen for @helloeacr.bsky.social Goodbye Flat Biology 🧫

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

A warm welcome to the newest member of the team: Lab-bubu

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

We are recruiting! Our lab is looking for a new mass cytometry technician to help study colorectal cancer organoid perturbation experiments at scale. Please feel free to contact me with any questions! Full job description and application details here: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

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James Reading @jamesreading.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

🚨 PhD Position available in our lab 🚨 exploring the power of blood immune multi-omics to detect lung cancer years prior to clinical diagnosis in a unique cohort of >10,000 CT screened individuals. ✅ Wet & dry lab ✅ September 2025 enrolment ✅ UK tuition fees only www.ucl.ac.uk/medical-scie...

ucl.ac.uk

Pre-Cancer Immunology

The Pre-Cancer Immunology Lab (James Reading Lab) is mapping pre-invasive T cell dynamics during carcinogenesis to detect and intercept cancer development.

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 13/07/2025

Congratulations Hsiu and team! 👏

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Chris Tape @christophertape.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

Great to see this out! Incredible achievement 👏

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