Welcome to the spring 2024 Ludwig Link! Regular readers may notice a couple of deviations from the norm in this issue.
First, we’ve dedicated a little more room than we typically would to one news story. It’s about a three-year team science initiative focused on immunometabolism launched by the Ludwig Institute this year. We thought it deserved a little extra space, not only because of its interesting subject but also for its stress on collaboration across the labs at Institute Branches and at autonomous Ludwig Centers. Second, you’ll notice we’ve mixed things up a bit in our Q&A feature by focusing on Ludwig trainees (here, here and here). We asked three trainees—two graduate students and a postdoc—to tell us about their lives, science and avocational interests. We had a great time chatting with them, enough to do this again in future Q&As.
What hasn’t changed in this issue, happily, is the rich selection of briefs we have for you on recent Ludwig publications. In our Research news section you’ll learn about pre-existing immune cell networks in tumors that predict whether patients with advanced melanoma are likely to respond to a personalized immunotherapy, how a nutrient in butter might aid immunotherapy, why a timekeeping gene has a contextually variable influence on tumor growth, a safer, more versatile CRISPR technology and its application to make fitter CAR-T cells and much else besides. You will also find in here news about new appointments and promotions at Ludwig Branches and the honors lately bestowed on scientists in our community.
Finally, in our “Ask a scientist” section you’ll find out how some of your colleagues are using AI in their work and how they think it’ll be used in the coming years in cancer research, prevention and care.
Happy reading.
Sincerely,
Unmesh Kher
Editorial Director