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Nathan Ewing-Crystal

@nathanec.bsky.social

53 followers 96 following 10 posts

MD/PhD Candidate, UCSF. Neuroimmunology, CNS fibroblasts, stromal-immune interactions. He/him

Posts Replies Media

Nathan Ewing-Crystal @nathanec.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Agree would love to test this! And congrats to Danae

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Nathan Ewing-Crystal @nathanec.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

Beautifully written - thank you! Love the parallelism to development.

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Nathan Ewing-Crystal @nathanec.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

8/ Very proud of this work, represented here by the amazing Chloe Prendergast, and excited to see where this field goes next!

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Nathan Ewing-Crystal @nathanec.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

7/ Overall, our work highlights the importance of brain fibroblasts after injury, raising the possibility of new therapeutic opportunities for stroke and TBI involving finetuning fibroblast states/transitions to achieve optimal wound healing and immune responses.

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Nathan Ewing-Crystal @nathanec.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

6/ Moreover, subsets of late-timepoint fibroblasts create lesional immune niches that direct T cell positioning and suppress cytokine expression - i.e., without fibroblast-derived signals, inflammation is unleashed (with interesting implications for neuronal signaling).

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Nathan Ewing-Crystal @nathanec.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

5/ We found that early myofibroblasts prevent cardiovascular collapse and subsequent organ damage after severe stroke, helping explain their protective effect.

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Nathan Ewing-Crystal @nathanec.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

4/ Since our preprint, we’ve added some exciting new data regarding the functional roles of fibroblasts after brain injury at early and late timepoints (in addition to an expanded analysis of fibroblast ontogeny and state differentiation, new injury models, and more).

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Nathan Ewing-Crystal @nathanec.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

3/ An early myofibroblast state is critical for wound-healing, with fibroblast-deficient mice showing larger lesions and persistent neuroinflammation (and elevated mortality with severe stroke). Myofibroblasts subsequently transition into several late states with distinct roles.

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Nathan Ewing-Crystal @nathanec.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

2/ We originally found that fibroblasts, long thought to be largely excluded from the brain, are critical players after injuries including stroke and TBI. Pre-existing fibroblasts expand in a TGFβ- and myeloid cell-dependent manner, passing through several transcriptional states.

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Nathan Ewing-Crystal @nathanec.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

1/ Thrilled to share that my PhD thesis work is now out in its final form @nature.com! A huge thanks to the entire team (which has only grown since we first put this out), our peer reviewers, the Nature editorial team, and the incredible @arimolofskylab.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Dynamic fibroblast–immune interactions shape recovery after brain injury - Nature

Spatial transcriptomic studies and lineage tracing reveal that, after brain injury, transient profibrotic fibroblasts develop from existing brain fibroblasts, infiltrate lesions, regulate the local im...

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