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PitarresiLab

@pitarresilab.bsky.social
718 followers 832 following 68 posts

Jason R. Pitarresi PhD Father. Assistant Professor @umasschan.bsky.social Studying pancreatic cancer, cellular plasticity/metastasis, and tumor-host interactions. www.PitarresiLab.com

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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Another successful @umasschan.bsky.social UMass Chan Cancer Center Retreat in the books! Congrats to Paula Vo for winning a best poster award and Calvin Johnson for being selected for a talk!
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I am very grateful to NIH staff for their support and efforts in helping us secure this R56 award from the NCI. I'm especially appreciative of my PO for championing our work on a novel driver of pancreatic cancer metastasis that has revealed exciting therapeutic vulnerabilities!
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Congrats to @nikitab.bsky.social in the lab on being promoted to Instructor @umasschan.bsky.social last month! She is entering the academic job market this year and will come with her own funding (Early K99/R00). Search committees, be on the lookout for this stellar candidate. Congrats Nikita!
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
Fantastic! Thank you, Florian!
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
My postdoc @nikitab.bsky.social just scored 3% on her K99/R00 Pathway to Independence grant!!!! Congratulations Nikita! She is an absolute rockstar studying cancer cachexia and metabolism in pancreatic cancer. Keep her on your radar if you are hiring in the near future!
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
Congrats Al and team! I missed this during the crazy holiday season, well done!
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Alessandro Carrer @acarrer.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
Excited to share our new manuscript on the reprogramming of cholesterol trafficking and sensing in pancreatitis. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Reprogramming of cholesterol sensing in epithelial cells supports pancreatic inflammation
Pancreatitis is a common cause of hospitalization that necessitates attentive clinical management. Affected individuals are at risk for pancreatic can…
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Gina DeNicola @ginadenicola.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
Interested in stable isotope infusions but daunted by jugular catheter surgery? New from postdoc @kimyumi0201.bsky.social: our simple tail vein catheter method enables anesthesia-free infusions in awake, freely moving mice. 🧵
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
This is amazing Gina, thank you for sharing! We will be reaching out for details.
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
Thanks @umasschan.bsky.social for writing about postdoc @nikitab.bsky.social in the lab and her recent Rising Star Award from the National Pancreas Foundation and fellowship award from the Pancreatic Cancer Alliance. Excited to go to the NPF awards gala in Boston! www.umassmed.edu/news/news-ar...
umassmed.edu
Postdoctoral fellow Nikita Bhalerao honored by National Pancreas Foundation
Postdoc Nikita Bhalerao, PhD, received the 2025 Rising Star Award from the National Pancreas Foundation and a fellowship from the Pancreatic Cancer Alliance.
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Congrats to @calvinjohnsonio.bsky.social in the lab for being selected to give a talk at our cancer center retreat. You did a fantastic job!!
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
Congrats to postdoc @nikitab.bsky.social for being awarded an AACR Scholar-in-Training award for this year's #AACRPan25 conference. Be sure to check out her poster # B049 today from 6-9pm!
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
Thank you, Jeremy!
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
Thanks Giulia! I'm looking forward to watching your talk when it's put on the meeting app!
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
For those attending the Cancer Cachexia Society @cancercachexia.bsky.social meeting in person who just saw my talk, I know there was no chance for questions for the virtual talks today...but I am happy to connect on here, in the meeting's Whova app, or via email. Please reach out! #FOMO
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Unfortunately, due to a last minute family medical issue, I will not be able to attend in person but will give my talk virtually and am available on here or via email to discuss our work after!
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Excited for my talk tomorrow at the 8th Cancer Cachexia Conference meeting, where I will present our work showing that tumor derived PTHrP is a new driver of pancreatic cancer cachexia. Check out our preprint for the full story: biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @cancercachexia.bsky.social
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
A fantastic write-up about grad student @jessicapeura.bsky.social's recent NIH F31 award and how she uses her life experiences to motivate her work looking at pancreatic cancer metastasis! Pieces like this remind me how lucky I am to be PI, where we get to train the next gen of passionate scientists
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
As a PI during these tough financial times, we really appreciate societies like @theaacr.bsky.social for supporting our trainees to attend conferences that are critical for their growth! 🙏 Thank you @AACR_CEO Margaret Foti!
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
Congrats to postdoc @nikitab.bsky.social for winning the Margaret Foti @theaacr.bsky.social Scholar-in-Training Award for next month's Pancreatic AACR conference! If you see her at the conference, be sure to ask her about her work on PDAC cachexia, bioRxiv link below! biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
Congrats to @calvinjohnsonio.bsky.social in the lab for being awarded a competitive slot on the Innate Immunity T32 @umasschan.bsky.social! In addition to being an amazing scientist, Calvin is also an elite Cat 2 cyclist. He is the one in black, attacking the breakaway group below!
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Chrystal Paulos @chrystalpaulos.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
🧵1/ New in @Cancer_Cell: Our lab discovered that Th17 cells must team up with B cells to eliminate tumors, and prevent it from coming back. 🔗 Read: www.cell.com/cancer-cell/... 🧬This unexpected immune duo sparks tumor immunity. 🖼️Image: See schematic Th17/B cell antitumor action!
cell.com
Adoptively transferred Th17 cells cooperate with host B cells to achieve durable tumor immunity
Cole et al. report that adoptively transferred, tumor-specific Th17 cells engage host B cells and drive B cell proliferation and differentiation. These Th17 cells require B cells for sustained immunit...
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
Fantastic work as always Cosimo!! Congrats to you and the team, especially first author @yijuan.bsky.social!
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
Congrats Cosimo!!
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 11/07/2025
Congrats to @calvinjohnsonio.bsky.social in the lab for winning a travel award for the AAI Advanced Course! He's leading the tumor immunology efforts in the lab and I'm excited to see what he learns at the workshop! 🙏 Grateful to the AAI for supporting trainees during these tough financial times!
media.tenor.com
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
NOA!! 🚨 Congrats to @jessicapeura.bsky.social in the lab for getting her NCI F31 notice of award today!! 🚨 With the NIH slowdowns, this has been quite the journey, but I'm happy to see some NOAs coming through for the trainees! @umasschan.bsky.social
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a man and a woman are standing next to each other in a room and congratulating each other with congrats .
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Officially welcoming our 2 new PhD students to the lab today! Head over to our lab website to check out some fun facts about Paula (co-mentored with the Spinelli lab) and Ethan @ethanhcchang.bsky.social. Excited to have you both on board and watch the team grow... www.pitarresilab.com/team
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Metastasis Research Society @metastasisresearch.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
1/Meet the MRS ECLC Chairs! Dr. Thomas Cox @trcox.matrixandmetastasis.com is a Professor at the @garvaninstitute.bsky.social focussing on the Extracellular Matrix and Fibrosis in Cancer. We interviewed Dr. Cox about his role as a founding member of the MRS Early Career Leadership Council 🧵👇
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Victor Javier @vjsanchez.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
Pancreatic cancer cachexia is mediated by PTHrP-driven disruption of adipose de novo lipogenesis 🧪 doi.org/10.1101/2025...
doi.org
Pancreatic cancer cachexia is mediated by PTHrP-driven disruption of adipose de novo lipogenesis
Pancreatic cancer patients have the highest rates and most severe forms of cancer cachexia, yet cachexia etiologies remain largely elusive, leading to a lack of effective intervening therapies. PTHrP ...
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
Immensely grateful to all collaborators from the Guertin, @marcus-ruscetti.bsky.social, @game-of-chroms.bsky.social, Zhu, Kremer, Czech, Guilherme, and Hollingsworth labs. you all have made this journey an amazing one.🙏
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
Most importantly, this paper only came together because of the fantastic community of collaborators we have built over the years. Really proud of my team led by @nikitab.bsky.social with critical support from Yamini Ogoti, @jessicapeura.bsky.social, and @calvinjohnsonio.bsky.social ...🧵
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
To wrap this story up, we treated KPCY animals with a monoclonal neutralizing antibody against PTHrP (🙏 Richard Kremer), which was able to block wasting and restore DNL. We are hoping this will be a new therapeutic option for patients suffering from cancer cachexia in the near future ...🧵
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
This is where we relied on our adipose tissue expert collaborators (Dave Guertin, Mike Czech, Adilson Guilherme labs), who helped us delete Fasn, a key enzyme in the DNL pathway, in adipocytes. When we injected a non-cachectic cell line into these mice, we found that it became cachectic! ...🧵
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
To figure out how PTHrP mediates adipose tissue wasting, we performed RNA-seq on cachectic iWAT and found the usual players being upregulated (TNF, IL6, etc.), but were surprised to also see a dramatic downregulation of de novo lipogenesis (DNL) in the adipose of cachectic mice ...🧵
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
We knew that adipocytes have high levels of the PTHrP receptor, PTH1R. We deleted Pth1r in adipose and injected our highly cachectic PTHrP-OE cell line. This not only blocked adipose tissue wasting, but also muscle wasting, suggesting that adipose wasting may fuel muscle wasting in this model ...🧵
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
We weren’t sure if PTHrP alone was driving this, so we injected WT animals with recombinant PTHrP and, to our surprise, they started to lose their adipose tissue. This is where things started to get really interesting …🧵
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
Next, we wanted to establish that PTHrP is sufficient for wasting, so we overexpressed Pthlh in a non-cachectic KPC line with low endogenous Pthlh. This effectively converted the non-cachectic cell line into a cachectic one, which dramatically reduced overall survival ...🧵
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
We saw big differences in adipose and muscle wasting phenotypes in Pthlh-deleted KPCY mice and noted that cachectic PDAC patients had higher tumor cell PTHrP expression in their primary tumors ...🧵
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
It is known clinically that PDAC patients with high PTHrP serum are more cachectic, so we dug a little deeper and found that Pthlh-deleted KPCY mice were resistant to PDAC-associated weight loss. So, it looks like PTHrP is necessary for cachectic wasting in KPC mice ...🧵
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
It started a few years ago when we had this exciting data showing that Pthlh (the gene encoding PTHrP) deletion in KPCY mice dramatically extended survival. We attributed this to a decrease in metastasis in a prior paper, but upon closer examination, we found they were also less cachectic ...🧵
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
I'm excited to share the lab’s new paper on PDAC-associated cachexia on bioRxiv today, led by star postdoc @nikitab.bsky.social “Pancreatic cancer cachexia is mediated by PTHrP-driven disruption of adipose de novo lipogenesis” A 🧵 below, if you are interested... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
I'm not sure I will ever experience this again as a PI, but THREE trainees in the lab gave invited talks today at the UMass Chan GI Research Day. Congrats to @nikitab.bsky.social @calvinjohnsonio.bsky.social @jessicapeura.bsky.social! Cahexia-Metastasis-Immunosuppression....we do it all!
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Neil deGrasse Tyson @neildegrassetyson.com · 17/05/2025
The 80-year recipe stoking America’s Prosperity: 1) Free-market capital investments in brilliant ideas… 2) enabled by Engineering Innovations… 3) based on Science Research in Universities… 4) funded by Grants from the US Government. It’s time more people understood this.
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
No name or signature. Based on others responding above, it looks like this is a stock response going out
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
My trainee just sent me this notification from the NIH about a pending F31 application. We knew it was likely to come, but it still hurt to read the words.
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Re-expression of the EMT transcription factor, Snail, was sufficient to restore metastatic competency in MCU-null tumor cells. This work highlights the potential for targeting mitochondrial Ca2+ signaling in pancreatic cancer therapy.
cell.com
Mitochondrial Ca2+ controls pancreatic cancer growth and metastasis by regulating epithelial cell plasticity
Weissenrieder et al. show that mitochondrial Ca2+ uniporter (MCU) deletion reduces growth and metastasis of murine KPCY cells by reducing cell-autologous induction of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transit...
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
In this work, we show that deletion of the mitochondrial calcium uniporter, MCU (which enables mitochondrial Ca2+ uptake), reduces metastatic capability in PDAC by blocking epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT), which is thought to contribute to metastasis.
cell.com
Mitochondrial Ca2+ controls pancreatic cancer growth and metastasis by regulating epithelial cell plasticity
Weissenrieder et al. show that mitochondrial Ca2+ uniporter (MCU) deletion reduces growth and metastasis of murine KPCY cells by reducing cell-autologous induction of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transit...
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
It was a truly collaborative effort lead by Jillian Weissenrieder, who is currently on the job market and moving to the Seattle area soon! Excited to see what she will do in the near future!! Reach out to @skyeweisse.bsky.social if you know of any opening (academia or industry)
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PitarresiLab @pitarresilab.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Congrats to first author @skyeweisse.bsky.social and co-authors @jessicapeura.bsky.social @nikitab.bsky.social @calvinjohnsonio.bsky.social on our recent collaborative effort with the Foskett lab on the role of mitochondrial calcium and MCU in pancreatic cancer metastasis @cellreports.bsky.social
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skyeweisse.bsky.social @skyeweisse.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
“Mitochondrial Ca2+ controls pancreatic cancer growth and metastasis by regulating epithelial cell plasticity,” is now available at Cell Reports. MCU-KO blocks EMT & reduces metastasis in PDAC, reversed by Snail. @pitarresilab.bsky.social #sciencesky www.cell.com/cell-reports...
cell.com
Mitochondrial Ca2+ controls pancreatic cancer growth and metastasis by regulating epithelial cell plasticity
Weissenrieder et al. show that mitochondrial Ca2+ uniporter (MCU) deletion reduces growth and metastasis of murine KPCY cells by reducing cell-autologous induction of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transit...
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