iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

📣 We are hiring! 📣 Since our NIH R01 on functionally engineered pericytes for Alzheimer's disease got funded, I am now looking for new people to join the lab at different levels (e.g., research tech, grad student, postdoc).

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

🧠 New funding opportunity for all scientists working on brain organoids 🧠

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

New study shows that TGFβ signaling is crucial for maintaining microglial resilience to myelin degeneration during aging. This highlights a previously unresolved checkpoint of TGFβ signaling with regional specificity and spatially restricted microglia–oligodendrocyte interactions.

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

Electroacupuncture alleviates blood-brain barrier disruption and neuroinflammation via astrocytic MC4R in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

Eleven clinical trials that will shape medicine in 2026 Happy to see a lot of cell-based therapies!

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

New in @natureportfolio.nature.com on microglial regulation in Alzheimer’s disease. The study shows that microglia with low PU.1 expression and surface CD28 reduce amyloid pathology and inflammation. It highlights immune co-stimulatory pathways as potential targets in AD. Very interesting!

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

Great work 👏 mapping how brain endothelial cells communicate with astrocyte endfeet at the blood–brain barrier in @natureportfolio.nature.com The study identifies ligand–receptor pairs conserved in humans and altered in MS and Alzheimer’s. Makes me also wonder how many could be druggable targets.

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Interesting new work @natureportfolio.nature.com showing that a small molecule identified through in silico transcriptome matching (thiorphan) enhances corticospinal regeneration after spinal cord injury. Combined with neural stem cell grafts, it improved forelimb recovery and axonal growth.

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Interesting new work modeling human cholinergic circuitry! Researchers generated nbM organoids from hPSCs and fused them with cortical organoids to form functional nbM–cortical assembloids. This provides a platform to study deficits seen in Down syndrome. @cp-cellstemcell.bsky.social

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

The brain neurovascular epigenome and its association with dementia @cp-neuron.bsky.social Great study that maps cell-type-specific regulomes showing that small vessel disease heritability spans the neurovascular unit, incl astrocytes. These findings link vascular risk and Alzheimer’s mechanisms.

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Pluripotent Cells Expressing APOE4 Exhibit a Pronounced Pro-Apoptotic Phenotype Accompanied by Markers of Hyperinflammation and a Blunted NF-κB Response www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/26...

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Important study shows that a new 3D method can efficiently produce dopamine neuron precursors from stem cells. The researchers also tracked how these cells grow and connect after transplantation, big step for Parkinson’s disease treatment! cell.com/cell-stem-ce...

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Great study dissecting molecular hallmarks of neuronal resilience in Alzheimer’s disease highlighting natural protective mechanisms that could help preserve cognition. x.com/rust_ruslan/...

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

Can stem cells help to regain brain function after stroke? Our new study in NatureComms @natureportfolio.nature.com shows that they can and dissect the key mechanisms driving recovery. t.co/KRfAHfkNIH

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Since mouse pericytes have been shown to clear Aβ and tau from the brain, we showed that our iPSC-pericytes are also capable of clearing Aβ and tau, and that this clearance is dependent on the lipoprotein receptor LRP1, a major Aβ clearance receptor.

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Functionally, iPSC-pericyte transplantation locally restored BBB integrity and promoted neuronal survival in the hippocampus of pericyte-deficient mice

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

To assess if the homing effect can be also seen in vivo, we next transplanted iPSC-pericytes into the hippocampi of pericyte-deficient mice. Similar to the ex vivo results, we confirmed that iPSC-pericytes can home to brain capillaries of mice in vivo

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Next, we confirmed a functional iPSC-pericyte–vasculature association using a proximity ligation assay (PLA) targeting two known pericyte–endothelium interactions: PDGF-BB/PDGFRB and vitronectin/ITGA5

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

To assess the specificity of homing, we downregulated PDGFRB a key pericyte surface receptor involved in cell adhesion in iPSC-pericytes (using siRNA), which resulted in reduced homing.

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Then we asked whether iPSC-pericytes can home to brain capillaries in host brains with reduced pericyte coverage. We added our cells to live brain slices of pericyte-deficient mice

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Next we show iPSC-pericytes help with the formation of blood-brain barrier tight junction proteins in human brain endothelial cells.

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

We first compared iPSC-pericytes and primary pericytes using proteomics/phosphoproteomics and found no major differences—iPSC-PC shared 96% of proteins and 98% of phosphopeptides, including key markers, adhesion proteins, and TFs.

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

New preprint🚨 We generated human brain pericytes from pluripotent stem cells. They show strong molecular & functional similarities to primary human brain pericytes Transplanted into pericyte-deficient mice, they formed hybrid human-mouse microvessels🐭 biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

We also discuss few recent studies using e.g. gene and cell therapies to improve BBB integrity and neuronal function and much more!

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

So how can we protect or modify BBB function in AD? One option is to enhance the clerance function for neurotoxic proteins at the BBB e.g. targeting lipoprotein receptors (LRP)

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

A new review from our lab exploring how the blood-brain barrier (BBB) can be used as a treatment target for neurodegenerative disorders tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/... TL;DR → Here are a few key highlights 👇

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

New review from our lab in @brain1878.bsky.social We explore how molecular blood-brain barrier (BBB) changes in aging, neurodegeneration and stroke affect disease progression, delivery of therapeutics, and much more! academic.oup.com/brain/advanc...

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

We found that increased long-term graft survival was mainly due to higher NPC proliferation within days after transplantation. In both groups, most grafts differentiated into neurons or glia, with no pluripotent residuals at 6 weeks after stroke

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Stem cell therapies hold great potential for stroke recovery; but when is the optimal time for transplantation? 🧠💉⏲️ Our latest preprint shows that delaying NPC therapy by one week post-stroke increases long-term graft survival 20-fold. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

DeepSeek R1 is making headlines in the news and is being compared to OpenAI's o1. However, many have not read the preprint. We invite you to evaluate the DeepSeek R1 preprint at @researchhubf.bsky.social , and reward high-quality contributions with 150$ (in RSC). researchhub.com/paper/916140...

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Ruslan Rust @rrust.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

This is the most comprehensive review on Alzheimer’s and inflammation I’ve read in a long time. Highly recommended for anyone interested in learning about AD research or future therapeutic possibilities in AD 🧠🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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