5. December 2025 – Xmas dinner! 🎄 Marcus and Monika once again hosted the lab for the yearly potluck-style christmas dinner, we enjoyed delicious food and homemade mulled wine.

24. October 2025 – New paper by René. From analysing the loss of function phenotypes of macroH2A family members in mice we conclude the following: Chromatin composition integrates with metabolic regulation at the NAD⁺ interface. Loss of macroH2A1.1 decouples chromatin–mitochondrial crosstalk, shifting nutrient flux toward glycolysis and instigating secondary organ dysfunction. This can be counteracted with a diet.

The inverse conclusion is that targeting macroH2A1.1 with a drug would be safe as side-effects could be avoided by adjusting what we eat. These are the results of a long-standing collaboration with Raffaele Teperino and the German Mouse Clinic.

1. October 2025 – We welcome Bedri Batuhan Yaman to the group. Bedri will study the role of nuclear metabolism in Acute Myeloid Leukemia. He is co-supervised by Florencia and fellow of the MSCA doctoral network NUCLEAR. Bedri is alumnus of VIB and University of Brussels (Belgium) and NeuroBM (Turkey).

30. September 2025 – Farewell, Francesco! After 6 month of Master research, Francesco B. Ciriscioli is returning to his home university in Triest, Italy. We thank Francesco for having generated interesting results with and for his supervisor Ollie. We will miss his calm and kind personality and wish him all the best!

28. September 2025 – Great weather at daytime and northern lights at night time illuminate the scientific kick-off of the HubMOL MSCA network in Someroy, a small island at the Artic Coast of Norway. As a network HubMOL will learn about the dual role of molecules such as NAD and SAM in signalling and metabolism.

1. August 2025 – We welcome Florencia Herbstein. She is joining us as a ‪Carrerasleaders MSCA Postdoctoral Fellow. She is alumna of IBioBA-MPSP and the University of Buenos Aires. Together we will expand the metabolic research line of the lab. Florencia will study how nuclear metabolism influences proliferation and therapy resistance in AML. In addition, she will join the MSCA DN NUCLEAR as co-supervisor.

1. July 2025 – Welcome back to Julia. Our 2023 trainee Julia Ledesma is back. Julia is using the summer break of her biology studies at the University of Barcelona to help us advancing our projects as auxiliary technician. Thanks a lot. It is great to have you again with us, Julia.

16. June 2025 – René and Marcus have returned from EHA Congress, after four intense days in the massive convention centre in Milan hosting 15.000 blood aficionados. Marcus was presenting a poster, one summarizing Shubhra’s results on STAG2 mutations in MDS.
As great honour and greater responsibility, Marcus together with Dominique Bonnet has taken over the chair of EHA’s Research Committee from Brian Huntly and Ruud Dell. The Research Committee organises and advises the Board on literally everything at EHA related with research. Tis includes support (grants, fellowships), networking (conferences, mentoring) and trainings. More info on the committee here: https://ehaweb.org/about-eha/organization/committees-and-units/research-committee
If you are going to EHA in the future do not miss the workshop on grant writing, excellently done and moderated in a highly entertaining manner by Meritxell Alberich-Jordà and Kostas Stamatopoulos.

28. April 2025 – Sonia, Marcus and our colleague Tanya Vavouri travelled to beautiful but rainy Bergen to interview the top-ranked candidates for the MSCA doctoral network HubMOL at UiB. For the first time in the history of the lab, a PhD student will be co-supervised by two group leaders. Tanya will supervise the computational aspects and Marcus guide the experimental work. Together, we want to dissect metabolic changes in AML and test for associated vulnerabilities.

11. April 2025 – The lab is busy interviewing candidates for three PhD positions associated with HubMOL and NUCLEAR. In between interviews, Jonathan, Ollie and Paula found a moment to run the 2025 Health Professionals Race, starting and ending in front of our door in the Can Ruti mountains. They got amazing times in this 10 K / 50% uphill circuit. Well done!

17. March 2025 – NEW LAB MEMBER! We welcome Francesco B. Ciriscioli to the team. He is alumnus of University of Urbino and Master student of the University of Triest. During the next six months and under the supervision of Ollie Meers, Francesco will study the role of the forgotten domain of the histone variant macroH2A in genome regulation. Welcome on board.

17.-20. March 2025 – Half of the lab attended the EHA ReCon 2025 on epigenetic and transcriptional regulation in Marbella – Málaga. David, Shubhra and Paula presented 3 posters and two flash talks. Jane Hsu from the Heidel lab presented the results of our joint project on macroH2A. As co-organizer Marcus was leading through great part of the program. Overall it was a very productive but also exhausting meeting with lots of discussions. David and Marina involuntarily had time to visit Málaga after getting their evening flight cancelled. As farewell present we have received a glass of sugar cane honey that only few of us managed to get through the security control at the airport.

28. February 2025 – Today, Eve Dias defended her PhD thesis with excellence. She discussed how mutations in the cohesin complex subunit STAG2 affects the communication of hematopietic cells with the bone marrow microenvironment. Eve is the first of 12 INTERCEPT-MDS students having received the doctor title.

28. February 2025 – Thanks a lot to Rachil Komproglou for having managed the MSCA ITN INTERCEPT-MDS during 2023 and 2024. After submitting the final report, she is now moving on to start her own company providing molecular services to plant breeders. Farewell, Rachil, and all the best for your exciting challenge!

24. February 2025 – This week Paula Roquero is in Girona at the Caixa Forum attending a training provided by SIRIS Academic as part of her La Caixa Foundation INPhINIT fellowship. Fellows gather to learn transversal skills such as as critical thinking, presentation skills and scientific integrity.

16. February 2025 – René Winkler is visiting the Crick Institute in London and discusses results on the role of STAG2 mutations in changing HSPC-microenvironment interactions. This is a collaborative project of the lab spearheaded by Shubhra.

12. February 2025 – Finding the right people is the most difficult part of our work and essential for the team dynamics in our lab. Today we have started to actively campaign for three (yes three!!!!) PhD positions that are available for the next academic year. In three different projects we want to address how metabolism affect genome regulation. Two positions are available through the NUCLEAR network and will take a primarily experimental angle. The third position is advertised through the HubMOL network and will start from a computational point of view. This position will be shared with the team of Tanya Vavouri.

16. January 2025 – New lab member! We welcome Dr. Sonia Nuñez Vazquez as project manager. Sonia is trained by Rachil and will take over the management of the recently funded MSCA doctoral training network NUCLEAR. Together with partners across Europe and one from Saudi Arabia, we will train 17 PhD students in the emerging field of metabolic genome regulation. If you want to know more about Sonia or the project click here.

01. January 2025 – A decade at the Carreras Institute! Ten years ago in January 2015 my group has joined the emerging Carreras Institute in January 2015. In these years we made our way into hematology while helping to grow the institute at the beautiful campus Can Ruti. A memorable moment was when we moved into the brand new in 2018. Thanks a lot to all that have contributed to get us where we are now! Looking forward to the next decade!

20. December 2024 – As one of the last actions of the year, we have published the website of the new MSCA doctoral network NUCLEAR that we will be coordinating. 16 positions for PhD students interested to study how metabolism affects genome regulation will be available 2025.

4. December 2024 – Once again former and current lab members came together for a Christmas dinner. Thanks so much to David and Sue for having hosted us all and to everyone for having contributed the most diverse dishes. A true treat!

1. December 2024 – Welcome to Nadya Cristina who has joined us new PhD student. Under the co-supervision of René Winkler, she will test the hypothesis that epigenetic regulation of the bone marrow stroma could be used as a point of therapeutic intervention for myeloid malignancies. She is alumna of the NKI and the University of Hong Kong and is funded as a CarrerasPathfinders fellow.

7.+8. November 2024 – David, René and former lab member Iris shared their knowledge by teaching. David taught programming R at the IGTP. René transmitted the importance of integrity and provided tools for self-control to the PhD students of MSCA doctoral network Immerge. And Iris took them on a journey into the relevance and impact of the gender dimension in science.

17. October 2024 – Today was Eve’s officially last day in the lab. After three years of working on chromatin regulators in MDS cells and cells of the bone marrow niche, Eve is now writing her thesis as the first fellow of the INTERCEPT-MDS doctoral network. Thank you for the great work, Eve, and good luck for your next career step.

9. October 2024 – Get to know the IJC Triathlon team! They are swimming, cycling and running to raise funds for leukemia patients, promoted by and supporting our parent organisation, the International Josep Carreras Leukaemia Foundation. The team is 80% powered by Buschbeck lab PhD students. If you want to support them, you can do this here with a microdonation. The proud PI wished he would be in form to join.

19. September 2024 – Marcus is acting as co-organizer in a conference organized in house from 20-22 November. We will bring together key opinion leaders on hematologic malignancies. Abstract submission is still open for another 2 weeks. Check out the program.

17. September 2024 – At the beautiful Palau Macaya, Jonathan and myself had the pleasure to meet the entrepreneur Teresa Tarrago. Teresa has adopted us in mentor and will guide us in how to convert our findings into a useful product. Looking forward to start our journey into innovation kindly funded by the CaixaImpulse program of the La Caixa Foundation.
Want to know more about Teresa? Check out her profile here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teresatarrago1/

22. August 2024 – Today, first-authored by Ollie, we have published a preview on elegant work by Ji et al. (2024, Mol Cell) describing how FACT removes macroH2A1.2 from nucleosomes in transcribed genes and its relevance for the function of innate immune cell. Access our preview until end of September for free here: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1jeMF3vVUPRmjz

23. July 2024 – As a last event before many of us will go on holiday, today we retreated and enjoyed a summer lunch at Can Rubiales. Unfortunately, we were missing Vane and Rachil.

22. July 2024 – Abstract submission is open for the EHA 2025 Research Conference co-organized by Marcus. Check it out.

27. June 2024 – David and myself had the pleasure to visit the studios of TV3 for the final event of the 2018 cancer call of the La Marató de TV3 foundation. The grant supported our collaboration with Florian Heidel’s team at MHH on the role of histone variants in AML. The exciting results are still keeping us busy.
Thanks a lot for all that contributed to the most successful fundraiser in the history of the La Marató de TV3 foundation.

17. June 2024 – Jonathan proudly presents the prize he received for the presenting the best poster at the Advanced Proteomics course at CRG. Can you see what it is? It is a Lego set for a mass spectrometer. Congratulations, Jonathan.

13.-16. June 2024 – René, Jeannine, Paula, Shubhra and myself are the lab’s delegation at #EHA2024 in Madrid. Posters presented by Eve and Shubhra on what we did about mutations in genes encoding cohesin components in MDS and AML.

12. April 2024 – Paula and Ollie represent the lab at the 2024 mountain run of 10K starting on our campus. Well done! Here the before and after pictures of our sport stars!

24. February 2024 – Lab members, family and friends came together for the annual BBA of spring onions. Pity that the weather forced us to stay inside.

1. February 2024 – Our technician alumna Ainhoa Perez Lopez returns to the lab as Master student. Ainhoa will study novel drug combinations to improve chemotherapy and work closely with Jeannine and Paula.

9. January 2024 – Today 15 years ago, the Buschbeck lab opened its doors at the late IMPPC, which is now a part of IGTP. Incredible 9 years ago we relocated and assisted the Carreras Institute in its birth.
Many thanks to past and present lab members for great work and for a collaborative team spirit which has brought us to where we are now. Thank you! Danke! Merci! Hvala! Grazie! Gracias! Gracies! Go raibh maith agat!

14. December 2023 – The lab comes together to share some food at Marcus’ and Monika’s place. The contributions of everyone made a colourful and delicious buffet with many vegan and vegetarian options.

21. November 2023 – Roberto and David publish regioneReloaded, an R package helping to make sense out of genomic and epigenomic data. In (epi)genomic experiments, the resulting data can often be represented as a list of regions defined by start and end coordinates in the reference genome (peaks, mutations, methylated regions, …). Often, research questions revolve around whether these different region sets in the genome are associated. In 2016, we developed regioneR as statistical tool using permutation tests that allow to answer the question of whether the observed association is higher or lower than a random expectation. With regioneReloaded, we take the core engine of regioneR and expand its usability to from pair-wise to many-vs-many and facilitate the analysis of multiple associations. Clusters of associated factors and/or genomic features can be indicative of functional relationships.

15. November 2023 – Eve and Shubhra have summarized their current knowledge about mutations in genes encoding components of the cohesin complex in myeloid malignancies. Punchlines of their recent review: STAG2 mutations are the most frequent and are loss of function. They promote disease progression by altering gene expression programs in hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells.

27. September – 3. October 2023 – The PhD students of the lab travel to Valencia for a double session of training with the INTERCEPT-MDS network. First, 3 days of scRNA-seq analysis with BioBam, Ana Conesa and guests. Then, as a special treat, CJ Fitzsimons from LeadershipSculptor leads them through three days of training in personal and management skills.

26. September 2023 – We had the pleasure to host Philipp Oberdoerffer from John Hopkins University and to spend several hours discussing about the role of macroH2A in genome maintenance. As a special treat, Philipp and Marcus closed the day’s agenda with a rock concert.

8.-11.June 2023 – Marcus, René and Shubhra were at Frankfurt for the EHA conference. Shubhra presented her work on mutations in chromatin regulators in a poster. Her INTERCEPT-MDS colleagues Maki Sakuma and Hélène Gleitz gave talks on VEXAS syndrome and MPN, respectively. For all of us, it was a great experience to learn from and to network with some of the greatest minds in the field of hematology.

1. and 2. June 2023 – Just returned from the a Stem Cell Niche meeting in Denmark, René acted as host and co-organiser of a workshop together Eva Martinez-Balibrea and Laura Belver at our institute. The workshop focused on Disease Models suitable for Immunotherapy and was organised for the COST action IMMUNO-Model.

19. May 2023 – Marcus, David, Oliver, Marina and Jonathan attended the 2023 Chromatin and Epigenetics Day organised by the Catalan Society for Biology. Ollie and Marcus gave talks on histone variant function and epi drugs, respectively. Overall it was a day full of exiciting chromatin research!

5. May 2023 – Today is another session of the ‘Introductory Course to R’ given by David Corujo for students, postdocs and technicians at the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute

3.-7. May 2023 – Marcus is participating in the FEBS workshop on Aging in Hematopoesis organised as a final event of the ARCH ITN on Crete.

31. March 2023 – Today we have hosted Alex Gaspar-Maia from the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota. A pleasure to discuss with a true expert about the intricacies of the histone variant macroH2A in enhancer regulation.

12.-16. March 2023 – Part of the lab travels to Florence for the 4th INTERCEPT-MDS retreat. Valeria Santini is our amazing hosts and shares her love for the florentine culture and food.

14. March 2023 – Double recognition for the lab from the the Spanish Cancer Association (FC AECC). Jeannine receives a prestigious career development award for her studies on accelerating drug repositioning in hematologic malignancies. The lab receives a research grant to study the targeting of the bone marrow microenvironment in MDS. This project will be co-led by René.

1. March 2023 – Marcus is coordinating the in-house MSCA postdoc program CarrerasLeaders. Today the call and website went life. The twitter handle is @carrerasleaders. Feel free to check it out.

29. January 2023 – Hiking time! Part of the lab climbed la Trona in the near-by mountains Cingles de Berti.

16. January 2023 – Welcome, Jonathan! Jonathan is joining us from the University Freiburg and after a stay at the Novartis Institute of BioMedical Research in Basel. Under the co-supervision of the postdoc Marina Farkas, Jonathan will dissect the connection between histone variants and metabolism.

4. January 2023 – We welcome Maki Sakuma from the Munich Leukemia Laboratory (MLL) to the lab. As a secondment of INTERCEPT-MDS network, Maki will spend two months in our lab working with Shubhra on a pipeline integrating the analysis of sequencing data for better diagnostics.

2. December 2022 – Early Christmas Dinner at Monika’s and Marcus’ place.

14. November 2022 – Informative and fun learning at IRB Barcelona conference ‘Quantitative dynamics of aging and premalignancy’. Eve and Shubhra attended and presented their posters.

2. November 2022 Angela Orso joins us as master’s student. She will be working with Jeannine on finding new combinational drug treatments for myeloid malingancies.

02. October 2022 – Sven de Pourcq from @UNI_FIRENZE is currently spending his intercept_mds secondment in our lab. Supervised by Jeannine Diesch and david , Sven is learning CUT&RUN and how to analyze drug response in cell cultures.

28. August 2022 – Several members of the lab joined the Spetses Summer School on Cancer Epigenetics from August 28 to September 3 that was organised by us for the MSCA ITN INTERCEPT-MDS. EMBL directrice Edith Heard gave one of the keynote lectures.

21. June 2022 – David publishes his paper describing how macroH2A modulates the response of cancer cells to inflammatory signalling.

Spring 2022 – The annual photo shoot on the roof-top terrace of IJC on a sunny day.

2021 – Thanks a lot for many great moments.