diff --git a/easybuild/easyconfigs/s/synthcity/synthcity-0.2.10-foss-2022b.eb b/easybuild/easyconfigs/s/synthcity/synthcity-0.2.10-foss-2022b.eb
index 105a486ab07..bc1eeafab12 100644
--- a/easybuild/easyconfigs/s/synthcity/synthcity-0.2.10-foss-2022b.eb
+++ b/easybuild/easyconfigs/s/synthcity/synthcity-0.2.10-foss-2022b.eb
@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ local_pretestopts = (
 )
 
 # fix invalid syntax of xgbse/setup.py
-local_xgbse_preinstallopts = "sed -i -e '45,49d' -e 's/pandas>=1.0.\*/pandas>=1.0.0/' setup.py && "
+local_xgbse_preinstallopts = r"sed -i -e '45,49d' -e 's/pandas>=1.0.\*/pandas>=1.0.0/' setup.py && "
 
 exts_list = [
     ('cfgv', '3.4.0', {