Hunter Shain

medrxiv.orgComprehensive molecular characterization of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma reveals determinants of metastatic progressionCutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC) is the second most common form of cancer worldwide. While most cSCCs are not life-threatening, 2-5% of patients develop metastases. To better understand what c...

Major preprint from our group is out. Feedback welcome! We built the largest molecular atlas of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC) to date – linking somatic mutations and gene expression patterns to metastatic outcome. A thread 🧵 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

Why do people with Werner syndrome develop a narrow set of cancers? Our new preprint, led by Meng Wang: losing the WRN helicase makes TA-rich repeats fragile, and in melanoma the resulting breaks recurrently switch on TERT. With Boris Bastian. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Why do we still have study section chairs in the era of AI?

3 Sept

Clippers get the harshest punishment for a team in NBA history. Kawhi Leonard's uncle get banned from the NBA. Meanwhile Kawhi Leonard is not suspended and he keeps 20 million in laundered money? How does this dude get off scot-free?

25 Aug

Why can't water-intensive agriculture be moved to places with water? Grow the alfalfa in Texas and ship it cattle in the Colorado river basin. Every other natural resource has figured out how to distribute itself through supply chains.

19 Aug

My recommendation to CSR... If a grant mechanism has a single digit success rate, allow the applicants to submit Human Subjects and Vertebrate Animals with their JIT documents instead of with the full application.

15 Aug

I’m noticing an uptick in desperate emails seeking volunteer labor from faculty. It feels like a symptom of the soft-money system reaching its breaking point. What’s striking is how often list-wide requests for unpaid faculty effort go out before remuneration is even considered.

30 July

I love drafting detailed budgets and inclusion/enrollment reports for grants with a 6% funding rate!

29 July

The regulatory burden for awards with a less than 10% success rate is a pure waste. Initial submissions should just be aims and research strategy. Invite discussed applications to submit all the other stuff in a 2 week window after learning that they will be discussed.

27 July

I think this is actually good. Application length more than doubles with all these boilerplate letters

This post is unavailable.

nature.comBrown bullhead catfish melanoma represents a novel transmissible cancer - NatureWhole-genome sequencing analysis of tumour and matched non-tumour host tissues of the brown bullhead catfish reveals a type of naturally occurring transmissible cancer.

23 July

Move over zebrafish. Welcome catfish. The newest model organism in the melanoma field. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

23 July

I am being asked to review a lot of papers/grants on topics where I have not published yet, but I do have active research. My theory is that AI is recommending me to editors. If correct, it is creepy that it seems to know so much about our behind-the-scenes work

I was just asked to review. The mail came from a "no-reply@" address. The only way to decline was to create a 2-factor login, fill in a dozen required fields, and navigate through a user portal. If this was a predatory, no-name entity, I would ignore it, but this was a serious request

This was a deeply collaborative effort. Barbara Rentroia-Pacheco with @sharmaharsh.bsky.social, Lara Pozza, Joleen Traets, @bishaltandukar.bsky.social , Olivia Steijlen, Romy Ruiter, Noel Cruz-Pacheco, Daphne Huigh, Arne Van Hoeck, Yan-Ting Chen, Beatriz Infante, Defne Baskurt, Vignesh Arunachalam,

Celeste Eggermont, Amanda Bas-Cristóbal Menéndez, Tamar Nijsten, Harmen van de Werken, Antien Mooyaart, Domenico Bellomo, Marlies Wakkee & Loes Hollestein. Funding from NIH, #HTAN, SkylineDx, and Health∼Holland, Top Sector Life Sciences & Health

SCCore-GEP was validated in 2 independent cohorts, where it outperformed staging systems and provided prognostic information independent of clinical models.

Importantly, SCCore-GEP performed well on biopsy material. That creates the possibility of estimating metastatic risk before definitive excision—when the result could help guide surgical planning, imaging, follow-up and consideration of (neo)adjuvant therapy.

Gene expression told an especially clear story. Tumors formed differentiated, basal-like and mesenchymal-like groups with progressively worse metastasis-free survival. Differentiation state—not immune programs—was the dominant axis separating outcomes.

We distilled these transcriptional programs into SCCore-GEP: a 23-gene signature that largely measures tumor differentiation, with additional contributions from normal epithelial, stromal and immune cells.

We identified 38 driver genes converging on a core set of pathways. This was NOT easy because of the high mutation burden in these tumors. This is IMHO the cleanest and most curated list of driver genes in this cancer subtype to date

A key strength of this study is that we have outcome information on each tumor. Poor outcome was associated with alterations in SWI/SNF, RAS–MAPK/PI3K and TGF-β pathways, as well as several arm-level copy-number changes. These features reveal genetic routes to metastatic competence.

We started by assembling the D-SQUAME study: a nationwide Dutch cohort of 19,120 patients with detailed clinicopathologic annotation and long-term outcomes. From these, we profiled 378 tumors by RNA-seq and 147 by whole-exome sequencing, balancing tumors that did and did not metastasize.

The mutational landscape was dominated by UV radiation, with additional contributions from aging, APOBEC activity and—in immunosuppressed patients—azathioprine exposure.

cSCC is extraordinarily common with an absolute mortality on par with melanoma, yet cSCC was omitted from TCGA and is excluded from many cancer registries. We need better biology and better ways to identify high-risk tumors.

10 July

Lebron should just lean into the hoopla and do "The Decision 2.0"

9 July

I asked my echo to play classic rock, and it started playing Creed. I feel old!

nytimes.comRichard Scolyer, Cancer Expert Who ‘Became His Own Subject,’ Dies at 59

28 June

Richard Scolyer, Cancer Expert Who ‘Became His Own Subject,’ Dies at 59 www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/s...

15 June

At my institution, if you are a day late taking an online training module, there is no courtesy warning -- just an email straight to your boss (for me, Dept. Chair).

linkedin.comIt is with a heavy heart that we share the deeply sad news that our cherished colleague Prof Richard Scolyer AO passed away yesterday 7th June 2026. Richard was a renowned pathologist and a world… | ...It is with a heavy heart that we share the deeply sad news that our cherished colleague Prof Richard Scolyer AO passed away yesterday 7th June 2026. Richard was a renowned pathologist and a world aut...

I heard the sad news on LI that Richard Scolyer passed away. He was a wonderful melanoma researcher and pathologist. He was a co-author on my first big paper in the field, describing the genomic landscape of desmoplastic melanoma. He was so kind and collaborative www.linkedin.com/posts/melano...

And then I got to meet him in person at several meetings. The jet lag from Australia could never keep him down. He was so energetic and full of great ideas. His contributions to the field of melanoma research, and his aggressive tactics...

to combat his own glioblastoma have taught us so much. He has done incredible work to help cement the paradigm of neoadjuvant treatment, especially in cancers where this was not even on the radar. Richard will be dearly missed.

I remember drafting, editing, and redrafting emails to him (before AI helped with this kind of stuff) because I was so nervous as a trainee to reach out for help, and he would reply instantaneously with enthusiasm "Sure!" to whatever I asked.

5 June

Visiting the National Cancer Institute with my colleague, Iwei Yeh, to learn about the cool science being carried out by the #HTAN project.

bit.lySomatic mutations distinguish melanocyte subpopulations in human skin - Nature Cell BiologyTandukar et al. dissect the mutational, gene expression and morphological features of adult human skin melanocytes at single-cell resolution.

19 May

Apparently, my institution has a committee on committees, and they are seeking members. While I have a soft spot for service, I might pass on this one

Hunter Shain reposted

Nature Cell Biology

@natcellbio.nature.com

18 May

☕ @shainlab.bsky.social , @bishaltandukar.bsky.social & co dissect the mutational, gene expression and morphological features of adult human skin melanocytes at single-cell resolution. bit.ly/4wzMyX0

16 May

Celebrating 4 oral presentations from our team at the Society of Investigative Dermatology Meeting in Chicago! Loes Hollestein @sharmaharsh.bsky.social Bárbara Rentroia Pacheco and myself with support from Arne Van Hoeck and Domenico Bellomo of SkylineDx BV. Look out for new prognostic tests in cSCC

8 May

Why is it so painful to update your CV?

STmut can now operate on Atera data from 10X Genomics. Here is a breast cancer that was profiled on the Atera platform

STmut can be downloaded here. github.com/limin321/stmut. Thanks to Limin Chen for creating the software and continually updating it to handle higher resolution spatial transcriptomics, as they are rolled out. Thanks to Vignesh Arunachalam for generating the present figures.

Original publication is here, though the software has been through many versions since the original manuscript was published. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

STmut can now operate on Atera data from 10X Genomics. Here is a breast cancer that was profiled on the Atera platform

STmut clearly identified two tumor subclones, distinguished by copy number alterations on 2q, 5q, 6q, 7p, 13, and 18.

They localize to different areas within the biopsy. The copy number calls can distinguish individual tumor cells from normal cells and from different subclones

www.latimes.com/science/stor...

6 May

latimes.comRFK Jr. clears path for minors' use of tanning beds, much to the dismay of dermatologistsIndoor tanning is associated with a 75% increase in melanoma risk. A proposed FDA rule intended to protect children is now gone.

Hunter Shain reposted

Bishal Tandukar

@bishaltandukar.bsky.social

29 Apr

Excited to share our latest work from @shainlab.bsky.social lab, now out in Nature Cell Biology: “Somatic mutations distinguish melanocyte subpopulations in human skin.” We find evidence that melanocyte stem cell dynamics shape human skin homeostasis and UV response. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comnature.com

biorxiv.orgSomatic mutations distinguish melanocyte subpopulations in human skinTo better understand the homeostatic mechanisms governing melanocytes, we performed deep phenotyping of clonal expansions of single melanocytes from human skin. In total, we interrogated the mutationa...

27 Apr

Excited to share that our paper, “Somatic mutations distinguish melanocyte subpopulations in human skin,” is now out in Nature Cell Biology. Reposting the thread below ⬇️

Hunter Shain@shainlab.bsky.social

Happy to share the latest preprint from our lab, “Somatic mutations distinguish melanocyte subpopulations in human skin”. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... [1]

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

27 Apr

nature.comSomatic mutations distinguish melanocyte subpopulations in human skin - Nature Cell BiologyTandukar et al. dissect the mutational, gene expression and morphological features of adult human skin melanocytes at single-cell resolution.

Hunter Shain reposted

Rita Strack

@ritastrack.bsky.social

22 Apr

For the fourth time in my ~12 year editorial career I was able to accept (in principle) a paper after one round of review. 🥳

19 Apr

@marinelab.bsky.social rocks it in the opening plenary of #AACR26, describing how to harness cellular plasticity to combat minimal residual disease. And I love the shoutout to STmut! Congrats Chris on all your success.

18 Apr

Why does Dillon Brooks have the Wikipedia logo tattooed on his arm