Meet Ryan McClure, PhD, Platform Leader at Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago and Chemistry of Life Processes Institute Predoctoral Training Program alumnus. His graduate research, focused on analyzing microbial natural products, chemical compounds produced by microbes that can be used as therapeutics, was conducted in the labs of Regan Thomson and Neil Kelleher. After receiving his PhD in 2017, Ryan accepted a position with AbbVie where he worked as a Senior Scientist in the Proteomics and Chemical Biology groups. Last year, he was recruited by Chan Zuckerberg (CZ) Biohub Chicago to lead the Mass Spec Omics platform. The CZ Biohub Chicago develops new approaches and technologies to better understand inflammation and the dysregulation of immune cells implicated in the vast majority of human diseases.

What drew you to your current position as Platform Leader at CZ Biohub Chicago?

I was familiar with the great work being done at the San Francisco Biohub and knew the Chicago Biohub was looking to develop its mass spectrometry efforts. While I really enjoyed my previous role at AbbVie where I worked with an amazing team on exciting projects, there was already so much existing infrastructure and inertia that comes with being at a Fortune 100 company. What drew me to the CZ Biohub Chicago position was the opportunity to be part of building a unique research institute from the ground up — shaping our shared vision, designing the lab, and as a mass spec enthusiast, selecting the instrumentation to support our work.

What is your role?

The grand challenge of the Chicago Biohub is to develop instrumented tissues that would allow researchers to perform spatiotemporal measurements of markers of inflammation and to be able to better understand what happens when the immune system goes awry—how signals get spread, where inflammation initiates, and what we can do to modulate it. Where my team, the Mass Spec Omics platform, comes in is mapping the molecular level information of inflammation—what does inflammation look like from a proteomic or a metabolomic standpoint across a variety of chronic inflammatory diseases. We aim to uncover the common and unique markers of inflammation with data-rich insights that reveal the complexities of the immune system.

What do you like most about your job?

I enjoy interacting and collaborating with other scientists and sharing the work that we’re doing. The Chicago Biohub employs scientists from diverse scientific disciplines, and it has been a lot of fun to learn about their work. We also have three spectacular partner universities with amazing investigators [Northwestern University, University of Chicago, and University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign] that are easy to communicate with about projects we’d like to get off the ground. It’s been a lot of fun.

How did being a CLP trainee help prepare you for your career?

One of my favorite things about the predoctoral fellowship was participating in the CLP research forums when all the trainees gave updates about their research.  These presentations exposed me to so much other science. PhD students are inherently highly focused, allowing them to dive deeply into their research. However, seeing such a breadth of research and how it was communicated was very valuable. In my current role, I’m not working exclusively with other mass spec scientists. I’m working with engineers, biologists, and other chemists. We obviously all have overlapping projects, but sometimes the way that you approach a problem or talk about a problem can be very different. Having had that experience where I was already thinking about how to present my thesis work to someone who is a scientist outside of my field is very, very helpful training. And on the other side, how do you listen to someone’s presentation that’s outside of your own field and know how to onboard that information and think about what you could then do to assist with their project or just to further your own knowledge.

What was a highlight of your time at Northwestern?

My thesis defense day was an “on cloud nine” moment—an incredible feeling of accomplishment after navigating the process and coming out on top.  Another unforgettable milestone was having our first joint Kelleher/Thomson paper accepted. In science, progress often comes in incremental steps—an experiment works, but that success can feel fleeting. Seeing our shared work published made those efforts tangible, something we could truly hold onto. Beyond the lab, I’ve stayed close with former lab mates from Neil and Regan’s groups—in fact, I’m seeing some of them tonight. My time at Northwestern not only shaped my research but also led to many lasting friendships.

by Lisa La Vallee