Cristina Muñoz Pinedo

“SARMoptosis” is coming next. Feeling the vibe…

It seems that when we can’t figure out the type of regulated cell death we now call it like that?
“Necrosis” is too unsexy these days, CICD had a terrible name, and pyroptosis is too complicated to rule out without inexpensive inhibitors

Some public-health experts and science commentators were saying this at the time. For all the wonders of rapid tests and then vaccines, we could not science our way out of problems that were not science problems at their core.

Timeline cleanse:
Baby tapir getting scritches for their itches.

If you want to scritch your very own tapir & you live outside of Central or South America or SE Asia, you'll need to visit a zoo.

But these little guys are (evolutionarily) from around here, in North America. Let's talk about it.

The landscape of regulated cell death: It’s all downhill from here The regulated cell death pathways apoptosis, pyroptosis, and necroptosis are connected on multiple levels. To provide a novel and intuitive conceptual framework of the collaborative and complex nature...

The landscape of regulated cell death: It’s all downhill from here: Molecular Cell www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Beginning to see politics on LinkedIn too!
But it was here from the beginning; just more on the side of Academic’s favored positions, so it seemed more benign.
My trick of having two separate accounts is working on twitter, btw; algorithm improving a bit also; less rage bait now (I think)

Thank you so much Ruoning!

Many years, and in the end, 3 first authors from our PRETT lab (co-PI Ernest Nadal): chronologically Miguel Hernández, Fedra Luciano-Mateo and Joaquim Moreno.

Pretty much every PhD and master student helped.
Thanks Mabel, Lidia, Silvia, Didac, Francesca, Sara, Felipe, who teamed up like champs.

Bonus finding: mannose prevents LIF release.

But this is because these lung cancer cells use mannose quite well!
Not so efficiently as they metabolize glucose, but A549 cells can make many metabolites from mannose - caution when thinking of mannose as an "anti-cancer sugar".
9/10

We found an effect of LIF on ICAM-1 and IL-6 production by HUVEC cells, suggesting that LIF regulated the immune system (perhaps indirectly?)
And indeed, LIF-KO cells had a very different immune microenvironment.
And they did not implant in the lung.
8/10

LIF is angiogenic or antiangiogienic depending on the context. In lung cancer patients databases, it correlates with angiogenesis.
However, correlation is not causation.
We injected lung cancer cells without LIF, and subcutaneous tumors have less CD31 mRNA.
And they are much smaller!
7/10

Trying to find what could LIF do, we searched for expression of LIF receptor mRNA: it is majoritarily expressed by endothelial cells.
This initially suggested angiogenesis.
Actually, LIF correlates better with angiogenesis in TCGA than VEGF!
Particularly in lung squamous cell carcinoma.
6/10

Which signals were engaged by glucose that caused LIF release?
We found both PERK (#UPR)
and the MAPK MEK to mediate this effect. Both are activated upon glucose withdrawal.
The mechanism of LIF production is probably linked to translation of its mRNA, to test in the future.
5/10

... using other antibodies we could detect LIF release in several NSCLC cell lines, human and murine. Not all cell lines. Actually non-transformed cell lines did not increase LIF secretion.
This also means that LIF glycosylation is not necessary for its release.
4/10

The work started when Franzi Püschel observed that LIF was secreted from cells without glucose. The array and the initial ELISA antibodies (both widely used and from a reputable antibody company!) did only detected the un-glycosylated form, which misled us for years. 😠
However ...
3/10

Glucose deprivation drives LIF-dependent lung cancer - Nature Metabolism Glucose deprivation triggers the secretion of the cytokine LIF, which promotes angiogenesis and immune suppression in lung cancer models.

LIF is an IL-6-related cytokine that mediates embryo implantation, cachexia and immune suppression. We found that LIF is one of the signals released by starved cells.
@natmetabolism.nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
2/10

What happens when tumor cells can't find enough nutrients? They "call" other cells. We have found a new mediator of this phenomenon: the multifunctional cytokine LIF 👇🧵

This project started with confusion 🤔 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Loss of LUBAC or OTULIN causes severe inflammatory disease. But patients also show clear metabolic defects.

Neither LUBAC nor OTULIN had been linked to metabolic regulation.

So where do these metabolic manifestations come from?

MetaboList – January 2026 Glucose metabolism Glucose deprivation drives LIF-dependent lung cancer Fedra Luciano-Mateo, Joaquim Moreno-Caceres, Miguel Hernández-Madrigal, Franziska Püschel, Lidia Collado-Rodriguez, Francesca…

Cancer metabolism, papers from January 2026.
Glycolysis, starvation, nutrient sensing, hypoxia, amino acids, cachexia, diet, lipids, cancer immune metabolism...
MetaboList
metabolist.wordpress.com/2026/02/09/m...

Latest articles on cell death: the ApoList
Articles on apoptosis, pyroptosis, necroptosis and ferroptosis, and how dead cells interact with the microenvironment
celldeath.wordpress.com/2026/02/09/a...

Thank you! I will attempt a “bluetorial” at some point

Someone told me earlier today that doing a tweetorial (or bluetorial) to highlight one’s scientific articles is “cringe”.
Is it?
I wanted to highlight our last article like this 🙁

As Fran was nice enough to highlight this, I thought I'd put up a brief thread. 3 in 10 proteins that our cells make are either embedded in membranes (ion channels, adhesion molecules, etc.) or secreted (insulin, antibodies). They move through the secretory pathway.
1/

(Because I had been waiting a while for this story to be out, after seeing it presented at a meeting)

Thanks for posting it!

Activated ATF6α is a hepatic tumour driver restricting immunosurveillance - Nature ATF6α activation in human and preclinical models of hepatocellular carcinoma is significantly associated with an aggressive tumour phenotype characterized by reduced survival, glycolytic reprogramming...

Here’s the link

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Veronika!

Glucose deprivation drives LIF-dependent lung cancer @natmetabolism.nature.com @crismunozp.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s42...

We published something BIG and we collapsed it