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michaelflorea.bsky.social

@michaelflorea.bsky.social
19 followers 16 following 126 posts
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
What's cool is, without measuring behavior, one could have easily dismissed this as calory restriction. Understanding the whole of your animal matters. Link to the paper: www.nature.com/articles/s4...
nature.com
Late-life semaglutide treatment slows ageing and extends lifespan in female mice
Nature - Semaglutide treatment for 3 months in female mice improved physiological function, attenuated hallmarks of ageing and modulated nutrient sensors and conserved genetic regulators of...
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Assuming these measures hold. Two caveats worth keeping in view. Female mice only, and it is one strain, C57BL/6. Plus the standard caveats of hand-measured data and human bias.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
And on three measures, exploratory drive, spatial memory and glucose tolerance, semaglutide did not just hold the animals at baseline the way calorie restriction did. It pushed them above baseline. Which means something is happening that reduced calorie intake alone does not explain.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Semaglutide mice ate gradually across the day with suppressed appetite and showed no foraging rhythm. Same calories in, completely different behavioural and metabolic state.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The mechanisms are not the same even though the calorie deficit is. Calorie-restricted mice ate their allotment quickly and then fasted, and showed the classic anticipatory activity spike late in the light phase as they waited for food.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
So they did the experiment. Compared semaglutide against matched 24% calorie restriction, head to head, in the same study. That comparison is the part I find most interesting
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Semaglutide cut food intake, raised NAD+, induced sirtuins, lowered IGF1, and the liver transcriptome overlapped substantially with published calorie restriction data. This could just be a calory restriction in disguise.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
They started dosing at old age (20 months) and median lifespan went from 742 to 834 days. They ran the treated mice through a full physiological battery. Basically all physiological aspects got better. But they also ate 24% less.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Published in Nature recently - semaglutide extends lifespan in mice. But is it just calory restriction?
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Also known as: Head of Manufacturing / Director of Operations / VP Manufacturing and Supply Chain / Head of Production / Plant Manager If that's you, or you know the person, link to application in the first comment. We'll be hiring fast. Please share.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
This is for someone who has taken a physical product through a real scale up, as the #2 or #1. Not a manage-from-a-desk role, not a job with an existing playbook. Bay Area based and on the floor. If you want a 9-to-5, this isn't it.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
The floor, the technicians on it, inventory, packaging, shipping, and every vendor feeding it. It's the operation you always knew how to build, at a company small enough that you build it your way.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
In June, thirteen people shipped a 2000 pieces of hardware in five weeks with no automation. We've been sold out three to four months for the past eighteen months. You own converting this intensity to systems that scale. You'll own manufacturing and fulfillment in South San Francisco.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
We're looking for a rockstar operator for our Head of Ops If you've scaled manufacturing & fulfillment before, and are ready to be the person who converts a small floor to a massive one, this is for you. oldenlabs.notion.site/Head-of-Ope...
oldenlabs.notion.site
Head of Operations | Notion
Who this is for. You have taken a physical-product operation through a real scale-up before, as the #2 or as the #1 somewhere smaller. You were the person who wrote the procedures after the first ugly launch. You have double-sourced a consumable after a vendor slip cost you a quarter. You have watched a build rate triple. Where you are now, you feel constrained to apply your full potential and you are ready to own manufacturing end to end, from the first SOP to the staffed floor. You’re ready to be the person who built the operation that took a company from a small floor to a massive one.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Also known as: Head Field Application Scientist / Head Customer Success Scientist / Head Applications Scientist / Technical Application Specialist If that's you, or you know the person, link to application in the first comment. We'll be hiring fast. Please share
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
This is for a PhD with deep animal experience who holds their own with senior scientists, tells hard truths because they want the science to work, and builds systems by instinct. Not a wet-lab role, not a support role. We're early and intense. If you want a 9-to-5, this isn't it.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
It's the impact you went into science for, across a whole field instead of one lab, without the bench or the grant treadmill.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Thousands of our devices are in hundreds of labs worldwide and many more waiting. You'll be the scientist that figures out how to accelerate others at scale and guide what we build next.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
You'll own how Olden's tech reaches researchers and whether they succeed with it. Telling a PI honestly if their design works, taking hard setup and data problems that you solve once and turn into systems so it scales.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
We're hiring our Head of Scientific Adoption! If you're a scientist who'd rather accelerate a thousand other scientist than run one more study yourself, this is for you.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
If that's you, or you know the person, link to application here. We'll be hiring fast. Please share. oldenlabs.notion.site/Founding-In...
oldenlabs.notion.site
Founding In Vivo Scientist | Notion
Founding In Vivo Scientist
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
This is for someone with hands-on rodent experience (a PhD, or a strong MSc/BSc) who is rigorous, high-agency, and wants to build. It's early and intense. If you want a 9-to-5, this isn't it.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
You'll be an author on papers (our first customer paper passed 100k views), work across biology, hardware, and AI, and own the science as we scale. It's the science you want to do, at 10x speed, without the grant treadmill or waiting a decade to find out if your papers mattered.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
We're hiring a Founding In Vivo Scientist! If you love building, hands-on in vivo science and speed, this is for you. You'll be running the studies that build and validate brand-new automated measurements for animal health and turn them into products labs around the world use.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Broader point - sex differences are not new but still underweighed in research. Usually to lower N, due to cost. Solve the cost & tooling and you solve the problem. www.nature.com/articles/s4...
nature.com
Time-restricted feeding extends healthspan in both sexes and lifespan in male C57BL/6 J mice
Nature Aging - Assessing over 500 male and female C57BL/6 J mice fed a standard diet, Iiams, Skinner and colleagues report that early-onset lifelong time-restricted feeding improved...
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
So females got a healthier life. Males got a longer one. Also: the 8-hour group also showed voluntary caloric restriction. When you compress the eating window enough, animals simply do not consume the same calories. So it's not just pure time-control, some level of calory-restriction happens.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Healthspan though -both sexes benefited. There were improvements in behavioural rhythmicity, body weight, body composition, frailty, and disease onset across both sexes. Females actually showed a more prolonged healthspan benefit relative to their total lifespan than males did.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Two feeding windows tested (12 hours and 8 hours during the dark phase), full lifespan follow-up. In male mice, 8-hour time-restricted feeding extended median lifespan by 12 percent. In female mice on the exact same protocol, there was no significant lifespan extension at all.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Eating at the right time apparently does extend your lifespan. At least in mice. If you're male. Takahashi lab, ran what is probably the most rigorous time-restricted feeding study in mice to date. 264 male and 264 female C57BL/6J mice, regular chow.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
www.nature.com/articles/s4...
nature.com
Brain motion is driven by mechanical coupling with the abdomen
Nature Neuroscience - Using two-photon imaging in mice, Garborg et al. show that brain movement within the skull is driven by abdominal muscle contractions through mechanical coupling with the...
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Brain is treated mechanically as isolated from the body. The reality is that the abdomen is squeezing the brain dozens of times every minute through a venous shortcut nobody was paying attention to. A very cool example of how physical motion links to overall physiology in unexpected ways.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Also, cognitive effects of obesity may have a mechanical component, because elevated intra-abdominal pressure could disrupt the system. Sleeping disruption caused by a full stomach may have another mechanistic cause. What I find most interesting is the broader principle.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
The awake brain is being continuously squeezed and emptied by the abdomen. The sleeping brain reverses this and fills.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Their simulations suggest this motion drives interstitial fluid out of the brain into the subarachnoid space, in the opposite direction of the glymphatic flow that happens during sleep. This may finally explain why injected tracers enter the cortex during sleep but not during wakefulness.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
When abdominal pressure rises, blood is pushed through these veins into the spinal canal, the dural sac narrows, cerebrospinal fluid is forced cranially, and the brain shifts.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
A network of valveless veins called the vertebral venous plexus connects the abdominal cavity to the spinal canal through small holes in the lumbar vertebrae.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
And it's not inertia, or heartbeat or breathing. It is driven by abdominal muscle contractions. They implanted EMG electrodes in the abdominal muscles of 24 mice and showed that the core stiffens fractions of a second before locomotion begins, and the brain moves at that same moment.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
A very cool paper came out in Nature Neuroscience last week. Patrick Drew's lab at Penn State showed that the mouse brain physically moves inside the skull every time the animal walks. Several micrometres of rostral and lateral displacement, captured live with two-photon microscopy.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Or maybe that's a stupid idea. Government != quality in most cases. Lmk what you think.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Maybe an answer to this dilemma is to make research animals a governmental responsibility - treat it like roads, electricity and other critical public infrastructure that must exist at sufficient quantity and high quality no matter the market dynamics.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
On another - monkeys are still a critical pillar of vital research. If key infrastructure underneath crumbles, patients are the ones paying for it in delayed research, possibly heavily.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
I have very mixed feelings about this. On one hand - Inotiv had animal rights violations and arguably underperformed in the market. That deservers closure.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
That is what the roadmap actually proposes. It is also the right way to do the transition in a way that does not damage science along the way. I think in that sense, handled better than the FDA equivalent in the US. Link: ec.europa.eu/commission/...
ec.europa.eu
Commission accelerates transition away from animal testing in chemical safety assessments
Today, the European Commission presented a roadmap towards phasing out animal testing for chemical safety assessments, which lays out clear, tangible steps to ensure the transition from animal testing methods to innovative non-animal approaches.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
There are 78 organs in a body, with multiple processes, immune responses, and circadian dynamics. No organoid yet captures that. Overall - biology needs to become digital. For this, we need to gather large amounts of data from various systems, while minimizing suffering.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Pillar 2 calls for AI and big-data approaches to method development. Both depend on high-quality, reproducible, continuous in vivo data. You cannot validate a NAM against poor-quality animal data. The ground truth has to be trustworthy or the whole replacement project collapses on itself.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
It’s honest about the fact that alternative methodologies cannot yet replace animal testing for systemic endpoints. Drug-discovery relevant actions are framed as reduce, refine, and waive, not eliminate. Pillar 1 explicitly calls for refinement and better tracking of animal use.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
The roadmap does NOT cover is basic biomedical research, translational research, or drug discovery. Those remain under Directive 2010/63/EU, which is not being amended. I think this is the right scope for a roadmap to take.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
The roadmap covers regulatory chemical safety assessments only - chemicals, pesticides and biocides, food and feed additives across 15 legislative domains. Pharma tox testing is NOT proposed to be eliminated, but refined in various ways. There’s no legal deadlines for full replacement.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
The European Commission published its roadmap on phasing out animal testing. I think headline coverage, for once, got it right.
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michaelflorea.bsky.social @michaelflorea.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Along the grain vs counter-grain: down hill vs uphill - whether it follows its training or goes against it. Feels like humans operate the same way. The underlying dynamic of what makes a question “interesting” vs “boring” vs “painful”.
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