Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪
she/her. Full Prof, AD Educ & Training @LombardiCancer. #lobular, HER2+/ER+ BrCa, #nuclearreceptors, #GBM. Co-founder @nrimpact.bsky.social. When not sciencing, I'm enjoying ⛵️⛺️🏋🏻♀️🏃🏻♀️🥃 Skeets my own
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪In triple-negative breast cancer, sensory neurons activate cancer-associated fibroblasts to secrete collagen, thus stimulating a dense extracellular matrix that drives immune exclusion @cellcellpress.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪I am SO incredibly excited to announce the launch of a global list of Inspiring Black Scientists. You can use this list to nominate and connect with researchers. Please share and join us in highlighting these outstanding scientists for #BlackHistoryMonth and beyond! www.wiley.com/en-us/resear...
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪The ways I had to unlearn some of these responses to be able to both mentor and parent appropriately
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Palbociclib for Hormone-Receptor–Positive, HER2-Positive Advanced Breast Cancer www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.... phase 3 trial, adding palbociclib to maintenance HER2-targeted🎯 &ET significantly improved progression-free survival in patients with HR+, HER2-+🧬 metastatic #BreastCancer
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪I am trying to do all the work I can during whatever space-time I have left. I don’t know how much that is, but I know it’s shrinking. I hope to leave behind work that is useful to the future.
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪House Appropriations minibus bill funding NIH is out now. - $400M increase - Multiyear funding of new awards capped at 2025 levels. - No line item for BRAIN Initiative text here: docs.house.gov/billsthiswee... Screenshots from Dem summary and Sec 240 (multiyear funding text).
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Good Sunday, all! Here is the curated weekly collection of papers in #cancermetabolism and #mitochondrialbiology. Don't miss it; find it here: biomed.news/bims-camemi/... Biomed News #keepreading "It's very simple to be happy. But it's very difficult to be simple." - Rabindranath Tagore
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪'We engineered breast cancer cells with broad metastatic potential to be auxotrophic for specific nutrients and assessed their ability to colonize different tissue sites. We then asked how tumour growth in different tissues relates to nutrient availability and tumour biosynthetic activity.'
- Waiting to board a small regional plane with, then sitting two rows away from, Muhammad Ali.
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Excellent news. The NIGMS Building Undergraduate Research Training (BURT) T34 NOFO is published. First due is Feb 25th, for December 26 funding. This condenses previous UG NOFOs so reach out to email/previous PO if you have Qs. files.simpler.grants.gov/opportunitie...
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪🚨 Alarm!!! 🚨 AI/ML course for microscopy image analysis!!! 🧐 In 2026 at Janelia (@hhmijanelia.bsky.social), no tuition, housing and meals provided! Isn’t that borderline unbelievable?!? 20 students, ~14 TAs and lecturers 🗓️ June 4-18 2026 ✍️ Jan 15 2026 ✍️ 🔁 pls!! www.janelia.org/you-janelia/...
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪My new ImageJ / Fiji toolkit is out 🔥! The goal is to make image handling & visualization easy, with an intuitive interface! Install it on Fiji with the "Image Viewer" update site #microscopy #ImageJ #FluorescenceFriday #microscopyMonday imagej.net/plugins/imag...
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪We wrote two reviews on cell migration, published today in Nature Methods. They provides practical guidelines how to select a cell-migration assay and how to analyze cell-migration data Review 1: nature.com/articles/s41... Review 2: nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪
It is Friday. Time for a new edition of #Autism: the #evidence. After spending some time talking about the consensus on what is behind the increase in #prevalence, and what does NOT cause autism, this week I am going to talk about what does, starting with #genetics - Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Nice writeup on Dr. Julie Pollock of University of Richmond's 2025 Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award! news.richmond.edu/releases/article/-/…
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪One of the things I was most excited about 1yr ago was joining 1 of the MOSIAC UE5s as a project scientist to work with those ECRs assigned to it. The opportunity to serve our greater communities. Truly a program that supported people across broad institutions, unlike the parent.
- Introduce yourself with 5 animals you've seen in the wild: Sea turtles Black tip sharks Moray eels Conch Flying fish
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Australia recorded ZERO cases of cervical cancer in women under 25 for the first time since they started tracking the cancer in the 80s. This is the power of vaccines. The HPV vaccine is extremely effective at preventing cancer. Viruses can be oncogenic. Get your vaccines and protect yourself!
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Interested in Zebrafish brain imaging? We released a 3D printed mold that's is super helpful for us. Check it out Customizable FDM-based zebrafish embryo mold for live imaging www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Work by Marcela and Jaakko in the lab
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Thats 216 biomedical PhD students for their whole degree, or 140 2 year R21 grants, or 30 5 year R01 grants, or one fired football coach...
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪A great intro to academic conferencing. Not sure how I missed this one. scienceforeveryone.science/getting-the-...
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪THIS IS BIG For non-academics who might not understand why: 1. Sen. Warren is still a Harvard professor so this is a call coming from inside the house 2. As a tenured law prof, Warren knows it is a VERY big deal from a labor standpoint to call on Harvard to ignore tenure. The bar for this is HIGH.
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Today I am starting a weekly post titled "Autism: The Evidence". I hope it helps someone fight the colossal wave of misinformation that is drowning us. Part 1: I heard Autism prevalence has gone up. Is that true? If so why?
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Read how understanding and tracking recent changing trends for lobular breast cancer are important—not only to improve care for those affected by it, but also to advance NBCC’s overarching mission to end all breast cancer. nbcc.info/4qmyBbS
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪It really seems like this administration is trying to eliminate the field of public health. MPHs and DrPHs will no longer be considered "professional degrees" by the DOE and, therefore, will face limits to accessing federal student loans. aspph.org/department-o...
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Adding more signs of how NIH science is/was broken: my lab team could not show up for 3 more accepted talks at scientific conferences, totaling 9 for the year now. If you interview current NIH trainees for grad or med schools please understand that we are giving them the best experience we can.
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪I wrote in the New York Times about how I think companies saying women are leaving because of "return to office" is a cop out. Nursing, a fundamentally in person job, is almost 90% female. So what do women really want? Boundaries. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/02/o...
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪"Regrettably, and despite the null hypothesis being simple, elegant and often underpinned by evidenced or reasoned convictions, conventional p-value analysis can only argue against the null hypothesis, never in favour of it."
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪When times are tough and we’re stressed out, we have to take extra care to not make other people’s lives unnecessarily hard, especially if they don’t have the freedom to easily avoid us (e.g., employees, students, family). Don’t let your shit roll downhill
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪A couple of fresh analogies in here that might be useful to you at Thanksgiving dinner.
- #TobRegSky #PedSky #MedSky #EpiSky #addictionsci #policysky #polisky #neuroskyence #neurosci 🧪🛟🫁 Excellent reporting by @bruceylee.bsky.social in @forbes.com about the new NIH multi year funding policy decimating US biomedical research. www.forbes.com/sites/brucel...
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪As a first generation Jamaican-American, the impact of Hurricane Melissa hits differently. To say that Jamaicans are resilient is an understatement, the island will need help now and for a while. This is what you can do to help www.instagram.com/reel/DQW_h8D... #islandsky #Caribbeansky #Jamaicansky
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪there was a deliberate decision to not cite my MIRA on this commentary, even though service to the scientific community is *supposed* to be a consideration during review www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪@joann-trejo.bsky.social, @marymunson4.bsky.social and I have a commentary in @natcellbio.nature.com on recent attacks on DEI in biomedical research: "If scientific research, especially biomedical research, is meant to serve everyone, then it requires that everyone has an opportunity to participate"
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Also worth mentioning, the deletion test is impossible to do when we have so many hidden figures in science and medicine whose contributions were significant but poorly acknowledged: people like Vivien Thomas, Herman Branson, Rosalind Franklin, and many others who are more hidden by history.
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪I know & trust that NIH staff will get this round of reviews done. Yet having done my own CSR reviews 'for nothing' & with my own R01 sitting unreviewed now, working on another NIH grant has never felt so painful and futile. A quiet impact on science, perhaps, robbing the joy from looking ahead.
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪This is ~70 5 year NIH grants to study blindness, Alzheimer's, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, epilepsy, infectious disease, stroke, respiratory diseases, etc...etc...etc...
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Our latest work is out in Nature today. In this paper, we introduce an improved version of NanoSeq, a duplex sequencing protocol with <5 errors per billion bp in single DNA molecules, and use it to study the somatic mutation landscape of oral epithelium in >1000 people www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪This was not a sample of academics.
- How many browsing tabs do you typically have open?* 1: 6% 2-5: 54% 6-10: 14% 11-20: 8% 21-30: 2% More than 30: 3% *across all windows, on desktop/laptop yougov.co.uk/topics/techn...
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Announcing such a major change to NSF GRFP this late in the cycle is incredibly cruel. 2nd yr students (mine included) have been working so hard on their proposals despite ongoing uncertainty. They are driven and passionate about being outstanding scientists and helping those coming up behind them.
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪This may be the most important paper ever published about NIH funded research. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪👨🔬Considering a career in cancer research, pharmacology, and/or prevention? Join our team in the fight against cancer as a phD student! 📚🔬 Applications for Summer 2026 are open through December- we'd love to meet you at an upcoming info session! tumorbiology.georgetown.edu/phd/admissio...
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Very excited and proud to share my postdoctoral research with @neurrriot.bsky.social looking at the context-specific encoding of social behavior 💃🕺 in hormone-sensitive, large-scale brain networks in mice! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #neuroskyence #compneurosky 🧪 1/12
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View full threadReposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Finally, I’m currently on the job market, and would love to hear about any open faculty positions you have in your department! I’m interested in tenure track positions both in the US and abroad. 12/12
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪🚀 Our new paper is out @natmethods.nature.com! Kuffer & Marzilli engineered conditionally stable MS2 & PP7 coat proteins (dMCP & dPCP) that degrade unless bound to RNA, enabling ultra–low-background, single-mRNA imaging in live cells. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧬 www.addgene.org/John_Ngo/
- Congratulations @needhibhalla.bsky.social !
- 🎉 Congratulations to Needhi Bhalla, UC Santa Cruz (www.bhallalab.com ), named a 2025 #ASCB Fellow! This honor celebrates her outstanding contributions to cell biology, leadership, & service. Fellows will be recognized at #CellBio2025 in Philadelphia this December. #CellBiology
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Bridging the Gap between Genomics and Social Determinants: Melissa B. Davis, Brittany D. Jenkins-Lord, and Michelle J. Lee addressed this topic in an #AACRdisp25 plenary session chaired by Christopher R. Flowers. @MeliD32 @ChrisRFlowersMD
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Any academic folks on H1B visas (even with stamps in passports) please get legal advice from your University attorneys before leaving the US.
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Biobanking Resources to Improve Cancer Research Outcomes for All: W. Douglas Cress, Heather A. Lankes, Joshua C. Denny, and patient advocate Alia Graham addressed this topic in an #AACRdisp25 session chaired by Jennifer B. Permuth.
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Elena Martinez, Kemi M. Doll, Erica T. Warner, and Tanya D. Agurs-Collins discussed "Obesity and Cancer" in an #AACRdisp25 plenary session chaired by Elizabeth M. Cespedes Feliciano and Lauren E. McCullough.
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Breast Cancer in Young Women: When, Why, and How? Melissa Troester, Kornelia Polyak, and Sherene Loi will address this question in an educational session at #SABCS25 (December 9-12). Learn more: buff.ly/OB6T5Xs @loisher.bsky.social
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪I want to start a new global movement: Meetless Monday - we encourages people to reduce their meeting activity by one day each week for personal health and the planet's well-being.
- Reposted by Becca Riggins 🇻🇮 ⛵️🧪Glioblastoma depends on the amino acid serine as a fuel source & serine-deficient diet slows tumor growth in mice @nature.com @dnagrathlab.bsky.social @lyssiotislab.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.nature.com/articles/d41... www.nature.com/articles/d41...
