Got the chance to give an office tour - with the star of the show - the office pineapple 🍍 putting in an important supporting role.
Kyle MacQuarrie MD PhD
@kylemacquarrie.bsky.social
Pediatric oncologist and physician-scientist in Chicago, Asst Prof, big ol’ science nerd, 🏳️🌈, views my own, etc etc
Just heard an ad on YouTube suggesting I ask my doctor if a specific type of CAR-T is right for me, and I truly cannot think of any medical treatment less suited for mass advertisement.
Annoyed Man Rubbing Face
ALT: Annoyed Man Rubbing Face
static.klipy.com
1/ Our paper, “Enhancer binding kinetics explain transcription factor hub formation,” is now published! Here we set out to understand why transcription factors form bright clusters or “hubs” in the nucleus, and whether those hubs actually control gene activity. tinyurl.com/38uf8348
Enhancer binding kinetics explain transcription factor hub formation
Transcription factors (TFs) form dynamic, high-concentration clusters, condensates, or hubs, proposed to increase TF binding frequency at target enhancers. However, how enhancer sequence shapes hub pr...
tinyurl.com
Even weekday lunchtime potlucks deserve cake.
It’s the last days of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and our fundraising with Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation will soon be coming to an end. Anything from donations, to reposts, to supporting another peds cancer effort is much appreciated! www.alexslemonade.org/2026/macquar...
MacQuarrie Lab
Every day, there are almost 800 new cases of childhood cancer around the world. This adds up to an estimated 300,000 new cases of cancer that affect children under the age of 20 each year worldwide. A...
alexslemonade.org
There are worse places to do some work on the weekend.
TFW your trip home goes from JFK -> ORD to JFK -> Cleveland -> ORD to JFK -> Cleveland (delayed x2) -> ORD to JFK -> Rochester NY (inflight diversion) to JFK -> Rochester Holiday Inn (x9 hours) to RCH (+1 day) -> ORD to RCH (+1 day) -> ORD (delay x1).
I guess I do science with the deer and in the woods now. (Partially because my flight home got cancelled literally as I posted this.)
100% more deer content at this meeting at Cold Spring Harbor than any other scientific meeting I’ve been to.
Got to show up on FOX32 Chicago on Labor Day to talk about Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, how important it is to support pediatric cancer patients and families, and a little about my work. Unknowingly coordinating my tie with the anchor’s outfit was just an added bonus.
Too many writing tasks to get through? Do what I (accidentally) did and write the list somewhere where visitors to your office will lean against the wall and unknowingly erase them for you. Problem solved. Follow me for more efficiency tips!
It’s Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and we’re taking part in Alex’s Lemonade Million Mile Fundraiser. Please consider supporting pediatric cancer patients, families, and research this month! www.alexslemonade.org/2026/macquar...
MacQuarrie Lab
Every day, there are almost 800 new cases of childhood cancer around the world. This adds up to an estimated 300,000 new cases of cancer that affect children under the age of 20 each year worldwide. A...
alexslemonade.org
*Very* excited to say that I and my lab are part of GENIE!
@PhysGenCenter@physgencenter.bsky.social · 2mo agoThe NSF has awarded Northwestern $30 million to launch the Center for Genome Intelligence Engineering (GENIE). By treating the genome as a physical and a computational system, GENIE will harness cellular memory to combat injury, disease, aging and more www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/article...
Just published in Advanced Science: "Chromatin Packing Domain Engineering Through the Manipulation of Nuclear Cationic States" "We may soon be able to engineer chromatin packing states to influence cell function” postdoctoral fellow Cody Dunton said. www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/article...
Study Reveals New Way Cells Organize Their Genomes
Professor Vadim Backman’s group showed that changing the nucleus’s ionic environment can rapidly reshape chromatin and alter how cancer cells respond to chemotherapy.
mccormick.northwestern.edu
Two people have died in Pennsylvania from measles, the state health department said. Both were unvaccinated. These the first deaths related to measles within the state in 35 years, it reports
2 people die from measles in Pennsylvania
Two people have died in Pennsylvania from measles, the state health department said Tuesday.
abcnews.com
Now that I know ‘expensive tastes’ is a keyword you can use, all my papers with pricey sequencing library prep are getting labeled this.
Nate O@nateo.bsky.social · 2mo ago🚨BREAKING🚨 An anonymous source has informed me Bouke de Vries, the racist academic at Ghent that hired the racist postdoc Cofnas, wrote an article defending lowering toilet seats I am revealing it here because the source says, 'De Vries has lawyers and I don't want to get in trouble'
Online Now: Melanoma to rhabdomyosarcoma plasticity in the setting of immunotherapy
Melanoma to rhabdomyosarcoma plasticity in the setting of immunotherapy
Knight et al. present the first molecularly validated case of metastatic melanoma that divergently evolved into rhabdomyosarcoma under treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitor. Longitudinal multiomic profiling revealed that this divergence was characterized by transcriptional changes rather than genetic mutations, providing insights into the mechanisms of lineage plasticity.
dlvr.it
You’re right, LinkedIn, I *haven’t* calculated the cost per wear of putting my lab members into these uniforms to do science. 🤔🤔 (And I guess waiters don’t exist?)
In a child with advanced nephroblastoma, T-cell therapy targeting preferentially expressed antigen in melanoma led to a 69% tumor reduction, with molecular, metabolic, and histologic evidence of complete remission at 200 days. Full case details: https://nej.md/3U8jVl2
When life gives you lemons (a 4 lb bag of plums from Costco), make lemonade (a plum upside-down cake).
My assistant for tonight’s final grant edits has assumed the appropriate vantage point to monitor my progress.
Amid the rush to burn DEI infrastructure to the ground, it’s worth remembering that the goal was never favoritism. It was a fair shot for people long excluded by unconscious or real bias — prominent scientists, including Nobel laureates, openly argued some “races” were innately unsuited for science.
in addition to the ablism, it's false reassurance -- nearly half of adults have hypertension, a lot have diabetes or high cholesterol, 7% are immunocompromised… people we encounter in our daily lives all the time we think of as healthy take BP meds, cholesterol meds, take mAbs for IBD…
Matthew Cortland (they)@matthewcort.land · 3mo agoI'm really, really, really tired of public health officials going out of their way to tell us that the dead had "underlying conditions" — a phrase so vague as to be useless in actually informing risk assessment. It's just ableism...
Not a big fan of the "sick, elderly and/or disabled people don't count" discourse that appears to follow public health disasters these days.
The New York Times@nytimes.com · 3mo agoBreaking News: Two deaths in Michigan have been linked to cyclospora. Both people who had the parasite also had underlying health issues.
This is exceptionally cool transcriptional biology (and science in general).
Jeff Groh@jeffgroh.bsky.social · 3mo agoAvocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Not my area of expertise, but it’s probably bad when water is shooting UP from drains during a downpour?
Devastating office pineapple plant update - it toppled over sometime during the weekend and now looks sort of drunk when I flipped it back upright. I suspect its remaining days are numbered. 🫡
Could Excel be conscious? We surveyed more than Jan 1 1900 people to find out.