SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The ongoing battle between the Trump administration and top universities has many scientists asking whether they can continue their research - even research that could potentially be lifesaving. From member station WBUR, reporter Martha Bebinger introduces us to one of those researchers - someone whose goal it is to prevent breast cancer.
MARTHA BEBINGER, BYLINE: Joan Brugge's lab at Harvard Medical School is all bright lights, sterile tubes and sleek microscopes on metal counters. Walking through the lab, Brugge stops in front of about two dozen small plastic jars with pink lids. She lifts one with reverence. Each jar holds samples of breast tissue donated by patients who had a biopsy, a mastectomy or other surgery, like breast reduction.
JOAN BRUGGE: We're going to section them and look at the architecture of the breast tissue.
BEBINGER: Using the results, Brugge and colleagues have identified cells that contain the seeds for breast tumors. To Brugge's surprise, they are incredibly common.
BRUGGE: Basically, every breast that we've looked at carries a small number of cells that have one or two of the mutations that are among those that are most commonly found in breast tumors.
BEBINGER: So we're all walking around with the potential for tumors?
BRUGGE: Exactly. Exactly.
BEBINGER: Brugge says her work could be a model for early cancer detection in other parts of our bodies. Now her team is looking for ways to isolate and eliminate those seed cells. She used to employ 18 researchers in this lab, but the Trump administration has upended funding for scientific research across the country and threatened ongoing research at Harvard in particular. Amid all of this disruption, Brugge lost a third of her staff and the breast cancer research slowed way, way down.
BRUGGE: We had to look at what we were originally planning on doing and look at the people that are left to do it, and just basically had to cut back.
BEBINGER: Brugge has found private funds to replace some lab members, but she says job candidates are wary because there is so much uncertainty about federal funding for cancer research. President Trump has proposed a 40% cut in the budget for the National Institutes of Health. In Congress, there's been pushback on those cuts, but there's still no final research budget for the current year.
Mark Fleury with the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network is reminding lawmakers why federal research funding matters. The cancer death rate, he says, is down 34% since the early '90s.
MARK FLEURY: But we still have an incredible ways to go before, you know, we can say we've really changed the trajectory of cancer.
BEBINGER: At least two reports have found that cutting grants like Brugge's would mean fewer drugs to treat cancer and other diseases. One of those reports was coauthored by MIT Professor Pierre Azoulay. It shows nearly 60% of drugs approved by the FDA since 2000 used research funded by the National Institutes of Health.
PIERRE AZOULAY: We can't say, but for that grant, that drug wouldn't have come into existence. But it makes us at least want to pause and say, OK, what are we doing here? Are we shooting ourselves in the foot?
BEBINGER: Instead of research, Brugge spends at least half of her time these days searching for funding, managing employees' anxieties and trying to plan ahead when the news keeps changing. She worries work in her lab will never return to normal.
BRUGGE: There'll always be now this existential threat to research. And I will definitely be concerned because we don't know what's going to happen in the future that might trigger a similar kind of action.
BEBINGER: Brugge has thought about winding down the work and closing the lab, but she still sees so much promise in those pink-lidded jars.
For NPR News, I'm Martha Bebinger in Boston.
DETROW: That story comes from NPR's partnership with WBUR and KFF Health News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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