“Cosmic Bubble” image features cells from a thyroid cancer subtype
Sriram Gubbi, MD, won the Endocrine Society’s 2025 Endocrine Images Art Competition with his microphotograph of follicular thyroid carcinoma cells titled “The Cosmic Bubble”.
The art competition celebrates the beauty of endocrine science as seen through the lens of a microscope. More than 30 entries were judged by a panel of Society members who based their assessments on the aesthetic value of the images and their significance to endocrine research.
Gubbi is a physician-scientist studying thyroid tumors and other thyroid conditions at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
“This image highlights the hyperactive nature of thyroid carcinoma cells, as evidenced by the consumption of the colloid, which leaves empty, circular ‘scalloped’ areas,” Gubbi writes in his entry. “This modified darkfield and filter illumination technique makes the tissues more luminescent and dynamic, resulting in an image that looks like an alien world, with the scalloped areas appearing as mysterious ‘cosmic bubbles.’”
As this year’s top winner, Gubbi will receive complimentary registration to either ENDO 2025 or ENDO 2026.
The second-place winner is Encarnación Torres Jiménez, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass. Torres entered an image of the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus nucleus in a heart-shaped spatial arrangement titled “Follow Your Heart, But Take Your Brain with You.”
The third-place winner is Siew Hoong Yip, Ph.D., of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, for an image showcasing the neurodiversity of the hypothalamic arcuate nucleus dopaminergic (A12) neurons. Yip and several co-authors published a mini-review on this topic in the basic science journal Endocrinology in February.
All three winners will have their art displayed at ENDO 2025 in San Francisco, Calif., from July 12-15, where they will be seen by thousands of endocrine scientists and researchers from all over the world. Their work also will be featured in Endocrine News, on the Society’s website, and on social media.
Visit the Endocrine Images Art Competition website for more information and to view this year’s top endocrine images along with previous year’s winners.
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