Category: Industry Updates

Imagine, says Milenko Cicmil, a crunched-up piece of paper. The surface of the ball is riddled with creases, folds, and pockets. A protein is like a more complex version of that crunched paper ball with pockets that molecules can nestle inside.

“It’s really all about that pocket,” says Cicmil, who cofounded and now serves as CEO of a new biotech start-up called Tasca Therapeutics. “It’s all about knowledge of the pocket and understanding how to drug that pocket that will, in turn, increase the universe of proteins we are currently drugging.”

Cicmil is particularly interested in proteins with hydrophobic pockets—potential binding sites for new drugs—that undergo the process of autopalmitoylation, which determines where the protein goes and what it does.

Almost 10 years ago, when Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) chemist Xu Wu identified TEA domain (TEAD) transcription factors that go through that process, he also determined it would be possible to develop new small molecules that could bind to those sites, Cicmil says (Nat. Chem. Biol. 2016, DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.2036). But Wu waited until February 2021 to move forward with that idea.

Wu got together with Cicmil and MGH dermatologist David Fisher to form a start-up to commercialize his idea. The trio started what is now Tasca “literally in my basement during the pandemic time,” Cicmil says.

Tasca is Italian for “pocket,” a nod to the firm’s efforts to develop small molecules that are meant to go after unique, hydrophobic pockets on proteins involved in cancer and other diseases. Cicmil says the start-up has identified about 100 proteins that undergo autopalmitoylation at specific sites, and of those, three to five proteins that will serve as targets for cancer treatment.

Tasca will start by evaluating its lead drug candidate—a molecule called CP-383—in small-cell lung cancer, colorectal cancer, head and neck cancer, and glioblastoma. The latter indication is of particular interest, Cicmil says, because CP-383 can cross the blood-brain barrier—a challenge in treating the infamously aggressive brain cancer.

Tasca has raised $52 million across a seed and series A round. Cure Ventures co-led the series A with the venture arm of Regeneron. According to Cicmil, the start-up is leaving the series A open for at least a few more months in the hopes of raising another $8 million or more. Tasca currently stands at 3 full-time employees, with plans to grow to 25 next year and move into a new lab space in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in mid-January.

Aside from cancer, Tasca is exploring the possibility of developing compounds for neurodegenerative and metabolic conditions. Still, the focus is on cancer for now: “We are very much an oncology-driven company,” Cicmil says. “But there is significant opportunity outside of oncology here as well.”

Most uses of the solvents trichloroethylene (TCE) and perchloroethylene (PCE) will be banned within 1–3 years under final rules released Dec. 9 by the US Environmental Protection Agency. But in response to pushback from some industries, the agency carved out longer phase-out times for certain applications.

The EPA’s crackdown on solvents under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) is part of the agency’s push to finalize proposed regulations before the administration of Donald J. Trump takes over Jan. 20.

TCE and PCE are 2 of the first 10 chemicals the EPA evaluated under the revisions to TSCA made in 2016. The agency proposed restrictions on both of them in 2023. Asbestos and methylene chloride are the only others for which final rules have been released.

TCE was once widely used as a solvent in cleaning products, degreasers, brake cleaners, lubricants, adhesives, coatings, and many other consumer and industrial products. The EPA considers the chemical “extremely toxic” and says it causes liver and kidney cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and a host of other health effects, even at low concentrations.

Under the EPA’s final rule, most uses of TCE will be phased out within 1 year. The agency claims that safer alternatives are available for those applications.

“It’s simply unacceptable to continue to allow cancer-causing chemicals to be used for things like glue, dry cleaning or stain removers when safer alternatives exist,” Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, says in a statement. “These rules are grounded in the best-available science that demonstrates the harmful impacts of PCE and TCE.”

The EPA will allow a longer phase-out period for a few uses of TCE, but it will require strict worker protections, including an inhalation exposure limit. Those applications include cleaning aircraft and medical devices, and manufacturing battery separators and refrigerants. The agency will also allow essential laboratory use of TCE for 50 years as long as worker protection requirements are met.

The final rule for PCE will phase out all consumer uses and many industrial uses within 3 years. Use of PCE in dry cleaning, where it is often referred to as perc, will be phased out over 10 years.

PCE causes liver, kidney, brain, and testicular cancer, as well as adverse effects on the immune and reproductive systems and the brain, liver, and kidney, according to the EPA.

TCE and PCE are interchangeable in many processes. The EPA’s rule allows PCE to be used as an alternative to TCE for some applications for which TCE is prohibited. For example, in industrial settings, PCE can continue to be used for energized electrical cleaning, manufacturing refrigerants, and vapor degreasing.

Environmental groups welcome the new rules, pointing out that TCE is notorious for contaminating drinking water and causing cancer.

“US communities large and small have tap water with potentially harmful levels of TCE, and they may not be aware of this risk,” Tasha Stoiber, a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group, says in a statement. “People can be exposed to this toxic solvent at home not just by drinking TCE-contaminated water but also by inhaling it when bathing and washing dishes.”

The targeted protein degrader BMS-986470 from Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) boosts levels of fetal hemoglobin in cells, mice, and monkeys, the company reported this weekend at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting. The dual Wiz and ZBTB7A degrader entered into a first Phase 1/2 sickle cell disease trial in July, 1 month ahead of a similar compound from Novartis.

“It’s a super exciting molecule and a fantastic exemplar of what we think is possible with targeted protein degraders,” Neil Bence, head of oncology discovery at BMS and who worked on the BMS-986470 program, tells C&EN.

Molecular glue-based degraders, small molecules that shunt proteins of interest to the cell’s garbage disposal system, have been making waves in oncology. The advancing sickle cell disease candidates showcase their potential in other diseases as well, Bence says.

Sickle cell disease affects around 8 million people worldwide. It is caused by mutations in theββ-globin protein that warp red blood cells and cause periodic pain crises and serious health complications. Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration approved Casgevy from Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics. It is a CRISPR-based medicine for sickle cell disease that partially silences BCL11A to boost the production of fetal hemoglobin, which is made with γ-globin. Blood cells typically stop making fetal hemoglobin after birth, but low levels of fetal hemoglobin can compensate for the loss of functional β-globin.

Casgevy is complex to administer and expensive, however, leaving a need for globally accessible treatment options.

Researchers at BMS think that molecular glue degraders could be up to the task. When researchers at BMS screened their degrader library for compounds that boosted γ-globin production, their top contenders were dual degraders of the Wiz and ZBTB7A transcription factors, the company reported at the ASH meeting.

Transcription factors are proteins that regulate gene expression to control critical cellular programs, including hemoglobin production. The transcription factors Wiz and ZBTB7A both contain G-loop degrons, the canonical binding interface for known glue degraders.

When the team treated human blood cells, mice, and monkeys with their lead drug candidate, BMS-986470, fetal hemoglobin levels rose markedly. “In preclinical models, it induces fetal hemoglobin to levels that are predicted to offer functional cure potential,” Bence says.

“The preclinical data are intriguing but do not guarantee that they translate to the in vivo setting,” cautions Stuart Orkin, a sickle cell expert at Boston Children’s Hospital whose work paved the way for Casgevy. “Bottom line: only time will tell.”

BMS isn’t the only firm trying to use degraders to tackle sickle cell disease. Novartis has a Wiz-targeting glue degrader, ITU512, that also induces γ-globin production and is also now in the clinic (Science 2024, DOI: 10.1126/science.adk6129).

Researchers from Mass General Brigham also reported at this year’s ASH meeting that a dual degrader of ZBTB7A and BCL11a appears to boost fetal hemoglobin levels. “We are in the very early, preclinical stages of research with this molecule,” says Jun Liu, the postdoc-physician who led this research.

The molecule, dubbed SH6, appears to act through a new binding motif on these transcription factor targets, according to a preprint published before peer review (bioRxiv 2024, DOI: 10.1101/2024.01.03.574032). More work is needed to determine how it degrades its targets, adds Liu.

With the degraders from BMS and Novartis now both in clinical trials, all eyes are on their safety and efficacy. Wiz is expressed by many cell types and has broad regulatory effects, raising the risks of unacceptable side effects. ZBTB7A also has complex biology, with key roles in blood cell development and beyond.

“We can get really excited about those drugs, but nobody can really predict what will happen in humans,” Liu says.

Understanding the factors contributing to reactivity trends is a fundamental skill that underpins chemists’ ability to design and develop new reactions. One of that the factors that students learn about early on is the inductive effect—the influence of the differing electronegativity between two atoms on the electron distribution within a bond. But Mark Elliott, an organic chemist at Cardiff University, asserts that chemists have for years been incorrectly teaching that concept for alkyl groups.

Alkyl groups have an electron-donating character, which is used to explain the stability of carbocations, trends in the acidity of carboxylic acids, and the basicity of amines. When alkyl groups’ electron-donating nature was observed in the 1920s and 1930s, chemistry pioneer Christopher Ingold concluded that it is the result of an inductive effect; that theory quickly entered—and has persisted in—textbooks.

But on closer inspection, this interpretation is counter-intuitive. Carbon is slightly more electronegative than hydrogen (2.52 versus 2.20 on the Pauling scale), meaning that an alkyl group should theoretically withdraw electrons from its adjacent atom. The observed electron-donating character must instead arise from other, more dominant factors.

According to Elliott, the subsequent discovery of hyperconjugation—the interactions between sigma orbitals on neighboring atoms—provides a more rational explanation. But modern resources for students still place an incorrect emphasis on the role of the inductive effect.

To solve the puzzle once and for all, Elliott and his colleagues used computations to demonstrate that alkyl groups do exert a subtle electron-withdrawing inductive effect (Org. Biomol. Chem. 2024, DOI: 10.1039/d4ob01572j). The team hope that its findings will encourage chemists to adopt greater rigor and accuracy in future explanations of reactivity trends, including the explications provided in student textbooks.

But rather than suggesting a theoretical misunderstanding by chemists, this inconsistency may reflect the challenge of effectively teaching complex theoretical concepts, particularly to secondary school age chemists, says Jonathan Clayden, an organic chemist at the University of Bristol and author of the undergraduate textbook Organic Chemistry. “We think of inductive effects as simpler to explain than molecular orbital theory. In secondary school teaching, [trends] may be explained with inductive effects where we would use conjugation to explain the same reactivity [at the undergraduate level].”

Regardless of the cause, Elliott thinks this inconsistency is extremely problematic educationally. The strength of his feeling is also evident in the new paper’s title: “Alkyl groups in organic molecules are NOT inductively electron-releasing.”

Though the forthright presentation of the team’s findings has surprised some researchers, they agree that the study has raised some important questions about chemistry education. “I think the authors have done well to point out that there are competing effects and their relative magnitude will determine the overall effect,” says Alastair J. J. Lennox, an organic chemist at the University of Bristol. “This is a really important concept that we should teach more.”

Clayden agrees. “I don’t think this is a big overturning of general opinion, but one of the important points they’ve raised is that aspect of balance between the simplicity of the explanation while making sure the explanation actually works,” he says.

And Elliott hopes his team’s evidence will gradually lead to changes in how chemistry is taught, especially during the tricky secondary school–undergraduate transition. “I’m very opposed to the situation that we often find ourselves in as university educators where we have to say to our students, ‘You learned this before but it’s not true,’” he says. “If I was rewriting one of my books, I would have a short statement that you do not need to worry about inductive effects for alkyl groups because, if the electronic effect is significant, it will not be an inductive effect!”

Researchers have developed a device that can simultaneously measure six markers of brain health. The sensor, which is inserted through the skull into the brain, can pull off this feat thanks to an artificial intelligence (AI) system that pieces apart the six signals in real time (ACS Sens. 2024, DOI: 10.1021/acssensors.4c02126).

Being able to continuously monitor biomarkers in patients with traumatic brain injury could improve outcomes by catching swelling or bleeding early enough for doctors to intervene. But most existing devices measure just one marker at a time. They also tend to be made with metal, so they can’t easily be used in combination with magnetic resonance imaging.

The new device relies on metal-free fiber optics to measure physical and chemical properties of the brain: temperature, pH, and the concentrations of sodium ions, calcium ions, glucose, and dissolved oxygen. Those biomarkers were chosen based on previous studies of how they change in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in the spinal cord, says Ali Yetisen, a chemical engineer at Imperial College London, who led the study along with Nan Jiang of Sichuan University. While researchers believe the measurements should give them insight into the energy metabolism of the brain, these markers have not been extensively studied, because previous equipment has not been able to measure them in real time and simultaneously, Yetisen says.

The sensor consists of seven optical fibers—one for each biomarker plus a spare—each coated with a commercially available small molecule or enzyme that fluoresces when it interacts with the marker it’s looking for. The fibers are inserted into the brain using a soft, flexible catheter designed to minimize damage to brain tissue.

Each fluorescing molecule is encapsulated in a polymer chosen to work with the property it measures. For instance, the dissolved oxygen probe is coated in polydimethylsiloxane, which is permeable by oxygen but not water. For the ion probes, the team used a poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate–acrylamide hydrogel, which admits water but keeps the sensor’s fluorophore stable, says Yubing Hu, a research associate at Imperial College London who worked on the device.

A laser that can emit three different wavelengths is shot through the fiber bundle to trigger the fluorescence. And finally the fluorescent signal bounces back up the fibers into a light sensor.

An issue with measuring so many signals simultaneously is that some of them overlap in the researchers’ spectra or get lost in background noise. To get around that, the researchers trained an AI system called a neural network. The system learned from data the device gathered from three sources: a lamb brain immersed in artificial CSF, a laboratory solution, and CSF taken from patients at a local hospital. The AI essentially makes the sensor more powerful because it can pick up signals that are otherwise hard to spot.

The AI can also identify characteristics of the signals, such as their intensity. It can predict changes in the markers in real time, so if it finds, for instance, an increase in sodium levels that might indicate a problem, it can alert doctors.

The device will need to be tested in live animals and then in clinical trials in humans before it can be cleared for clinical use, a process that Yetisen says could take 5–10 years.

“This looks like a clever strategy for multimodal sensing,” says John Rogers, a chemist at Northwestern University who was not involved in the research. “It will be interesting to determine in future work whether this approach can be used for long-term monitoring.”

From Oct. 20 to 26, American Chemical Society volunteers from 114 local sections, four international chemical sciences chapters, and several student chapters hosted hands-on activities and demonstrations for National Chemistry Week 2024 (NCW 2024).

This year’s theme was “Picture Perfect Chemistry.” The volunteers educated thousands of members of the public about chemistry’s role in photography and imaging. They also distributed free ACS resources, including the magazine Celebrating Chemistry. This year, 72,750 copies in English and 7,750 copies in Spanish were distributed. In addition, 32 sections participated in an illustrated poem contest for K–12 students.

“NCW 2024 was a picture-perfect success with local sections and other groups of chemists hosting thousands of children and families at their events with exciting hands-on demonstrations of chemistry,” Lori Stepan, chair of the ACS Committee on Community Activities, says in an email.

Volunteers this year were required to adhere to the ACS Youth Protection Policy for the first time. Since Sept. 1, all volunteers at ACS-hosted outreach events are required to clear an ACS background check. “The new Youth Protection Policy for ACS volunteers was reported to move quickly and smoothly,” says Stepan. “Most volunteers felt that the safety and security of our younger participants was of utmost importance and willingly submitted their clearance materials.” As of Oct. 31, more than 1,500 ACS background checks had been completed, with an average turnaround time of 12 h.

The following are highlights of the NCW 2024 events:

The California Section supported the 2024 Science in the Park event at California State University, East Bay. The volunteers demonstrated with ultraviolet (UV)–sensitive color-changing beads, cyanotype imaging paper, and ferromagnetic fluid sheets that detect magnetic fields.

The Central Massachusetts Local Section created a demonstration explaining the photosensitivity of silver salts for students at the Boys and Girls Club of Leominster.

The Central Ohio Valley Section hosted an outreach activity at a fall festival at Heritage Farm Museum and Village in Huntington, West Virginia. Section members and Marshall University students helped children create nature art prints with cyanotype paper and sunlight and taught them to use diffraction glasses to view atomic emission spectra from helium and neon discharge lamps.

The Central Wisconsin Local Section ran an imaging activity at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point’s Homecoming and Family Day. Volunteers showed more than 50 children and their families how scientists use probes to image atoms and molecules.

The District of Columbia’s Chemical Society of Washington hosted activities at the Spooky Mad Science Expo in Alexandria, Virginia. More than 100 children and their families engaged in activities such as using magnets to explain the imaging of atoms, making UV light prints with stencils of the NCW logo, and viewing the security markings on a $5 bill.

The Cincinnati Section coordinated hands-on experiments and demonstrations at 30 library branches and the Cincinnati Museum Center. These efforts reached 424 children and 167 adults.

The Columbus Section ran an outreach event for students at an Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services site. Volunteers demonstrated traditional photography negatives and helped students use stencils and transparencies to create images on UV-sensitive paper.

The East Tennessee Section organized its 34th annual chemistry show at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. It also held science shows at local schools, organized talks at Pellissippi State Community College and at a Tennessee Science Teachers Association meeting in Murfreesboro, and ran a group viewing of an ACS Program-in-a-Box interactive livestream broadcast.

Events organized by the Hampton Roads Local Section and an affiliated student chapter included a movie night in a local planetarium and a demonstration table at the First Landing State Park Fall Fest in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The student chapter also organized a Mole Day scavenger hunt.

The Illinois Heartland Section and Illinois College students hosted a watch party for an ACS Program-in-a-Box broadcast.

The Kentucky Local Section conducted demonstration shows at two universities, events which were complemented by luncheons, dinners, socials, game nights, and giveaways. It also distributed copies of Celebrating Chemistry to local elementary schools.

The Lake Superior Local Section held a Mole Day celebration with the College of Saint Scholastica’s Chemistry and Biochemistry Club.

The Louisville Local Section hosted demonstrations for elementary school students at the Kentucky Science Center. It also distributed resources to local elementary schools.

The Maryland Section conducted 19 separate events in public libraries and for homeschool cooperatives. Students learned about cyanotype paper and the similarities between human vision and camera function. They also used origami pinhole cameras, wrote secret messages, and made bracelets with UV-sensitive color-changing beads.

Texas’s Midland College Student Chapter, also called the Midland College Chemistry Club, conducted hands-on activities and demonstrations at the Midland Park Mall.

The Nigeria International Chemical Sciences Chapter and its student chapters hosted a weeklong celebration for students, educators, and the general public. The event included activities aimed at fostering a deeper appreciation for chemistry and its role in solving global challenges.

Dana M. Barry of the Northern New York Local Section discussed photography and cameras with students at the Saint Catherine of Siena Academy in Canton and distributed copies of Celebrating Chemistry to other local schools. The SUNY Plattsburgh Student Chapter also hosted an ACS Program-in-a-Box event.

Louisiana’s Ouachita Valley Local Section organized hands-on experiments related to polymer chemistry at the Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge and at local universities. It also hosted water chemistry and atmospheric chemistry activities at a local magnet school.

The Pensacola Section partnered with the University of West Florida Chemistry Club, an ACS student chapter, to host its third annual NCW tie-dye T-shirt event. It also ran an ACS Program-in-a-Box event with over 175 attendees and distributed Celebrating Chemistry magazines to elementary schools in Escambia County.

The Pittsburgh Section hosted 3 days of photography and lens experiments attended by 75 high school students at the Carnegie Science Center. It also organized an exposition-style event at the same site with exhibitors from companies, universities, and government agencies. This event saw 400 students and 100 families take part in activities, demonstrations, and career sessions.

Members of the Portland Local Section partnered with the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry to run hands-on activities. Visitors learned about cyanotype image development, X-ray imaging, scanning probe microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy.

The Puerto Rico Section hosted its annual Festival de Química at Paseo de la Princesa in San Juan, attracting hundreds of children and their families. Over 300 volunteers organized hands-on activities, demonstrations, contests, and workshops.

The Richland Section organized a large outreach event at Eastern Oregon University. A total of 85 students from grades 6–8 engaged in hands-on activities to solve the puzzle “Something’s Fishy: An Environmental Mystery.” Activities included a station exploring the use of fluorescence and imaging to identify fish diseases.

California’s Silicon Valley Local Section hosted outreach events attended by hundreds of children at the Redwood City Public Library and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library in San Jose.

The South Central Missouri Local Section ran demonstrations and hands-on experiments at the Missouri University of Science and Technology’s Spooky Fall Festival. It also distributed resources throughout Phelps County.

The South Florida Section and local student chapters coordinated hands-on activities during the Spooky Science Monster Mash at the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science. The Florida International University Biscayne Bay Campus Student Chapter also organized a Mole Day scavenger hunt and an ACS Program-in-a-Box watch party. The Barry University Chemistry Club, an ACS student chapter, conducted a photography workshop.

The Southern Nevada Local Section partnered with the Discovery Children’s Museum in Las Vegas to offer hands-on activities for children. Topics included polarizers, filters, transmission electron microscopes, liquid crystals, UV light, and refraction. It also organized a seminar with approximately 20 college student attendees.

The Tennessee Tech University Student Chapter hosted a research presentation by a senior chemistry major. It also distributed Celebrating Chemistry magazines and other promotional items to a local elementary school.

The University of Arizona Chemistry Club, an ACS student chapter, helped host a demonstration show for students at the university.

The University of Mississippi Student Members of the ACS distributed periodic table cookies and NCW merchandise to fellow students. It also hosted a seminar by chemistry professor Jason Ritchie on the chemistry of photography.

The Upper Ohio Valley Local Section arranged for Marietta College faculty to host two chemical magic shows featuring many colorful and fast chemical reactions. These were attended by students and families from 15 local elementary schools.

The Western Michigan Local Section held its annual Chemistry at the Mall event at Woodland Mall in Kentwood. Volunteers from local companies and universities performed hands-on chemistry with the public.

NCW 2025 will take place Oct. 19–25 with the theme “The Hidden Life of Spices.” Information on how to get involved can be found at www.acs.org/ncw. More details on the ACS youth protection policy are available here: www.acs.org/ypp.

As part of the National Chemistry Week 2024 celebrations, local sections of the American Chemical Society hosted a “Picture Perfect Chemistry” illustrated poem contest for K–12 students. In all, 32 local sections submitted poems that won their local competitions to the national illustrated poem contest. These are the winners of this year’s national competition.

First place: Demi P., South Florida Section

Second place: Clio B., Binghamton Local Section

First place: Sebastian B., Pittsburgh Section

Second place: Arnodeep D., Southwest Georgia Section

First place: Maya M., Chemical Society of Washington

Second place: Jennyliz S., Puerto Rico Section

First place: Mary W., Philadelphia Section

Second place: Jacob Z., Cincinnati Section.

Nina Notman is a freelance writer based in Salisbury, England.

Bluesky, the microblogging platform, is in ascendency. It started as an initiative of Twitter (as X was known at the time) in 2019, a geological age ago in social media time.

But since Bluesky opened to public registration in February 2024, it has proved something of a rival to X. In November, Bluesky added about 1 million new users per day—many of them exiles from X. The platform has been featured in a slew of mainstream media as both content and delivery platform, and publications like the Guardian announced that Bluesky would be their social media of choice. It has even given rise to #chemsky, a hashtag for chemists and the chemistry curious.

When Bluesky established itself as an independent company in October 2021, CEO Jay Graber cited incompatible incentives with its onetime parent. This rationale gets to the heart of Bluesky’s appeal for many, including scientists: vibes.

Since Elon Musk acquired X in 2022, it has increasingly been associated with his controversial brand. Recently, the Science and Technology group in the UK House of Commons summoned Musk to testify about misinformation on X. Musk retaliated with typical bluster, issuing his own counter-summons. It is no accident that the exodus from X gained momentum after Donald Trump’s victory in the US election. Musk has been a key ally of the president-elect and, for some, leaving the platform is akin to a protest vote.

The last several months have also brought a series of policy announcements on X that have fueled user concerns about privacy, misinformation, and copyright infringement. Typically, these policies were introduced with a view to monetizing engagement.

There is something to be said for vibes in a place where people go to find community. The Economist Impact team conducted a survey of more than 3,000 scientists in 2022, and over a third said they themselves or someone they knew had been harassed for their work. X is notorious for its lack of civility and the proliferation of “trolls”—social media speak for bullies.

Bluesky’s users can customize their experience. For example, being able to decide if your posts may be quoted by others on the platform can make a huge difference in containing bullying behavior. It would be nice to share a story on messenger RNA vaccines and not find your post the center of a pile-on by conspiracy theorists.

But there have been many social media dreams over the years. Heard of Mastodon? Or Post? And if Bluesky should endure, how do we know that with time and enough users the uncivil behavior that plagues X will not surface again? Especially if part of the reason we take to social media is to make science accessible.

This points to some unfashionable conclusions.

We in science should probably give up on trying to speak to everyone, everywhere on social media. You don’t design a dinner party to ensure broad debate. You might want the party to be thought-provoking, but it’s more important that it’s pleasant. Is it so bad to approach our social media with the same expectation?

Many would argue that this approach leads to echo chambers. Then so be it.

Even successful science influencers like Chemical Kim are educating those with some level of investment or curiosity.

Anyway, there’s some evidence that when people are seeking information, echo chambers are more permeable than we might expect. This is partly because people read more than they share but also because their positions on issues of science can vary from one topic to another according to a range of personal calculations.

Echo chambers are also part of how science works. Epistemic communities build a corpus of knowledge through provocation and managed skepticism. And a shared comradery. Platforms like Bluesky allow you to extend your lab community internationally in real time, without the formal strictures of other academic communication. That is worth supporting.

The world is a polarized place. So, enjoy your echo chamber. And join us on Bluesky @cenmag.bsky.social.

This editorial is the result of collective deliberation in C&EN. For this week’s editorial, the lead contributor is Nick Ishmael-Perkins.

Views expressed on this page are not necessarily those of ACS.