In the Media

MDI Bio Lab Microscopy Training Featured in Mount Desert Islander

MDI Bio Lab concerned by 'uncertainty' with federal funding

Courtesy of the Mount Desert Islander
By Zach Lanning

BAR HARBOR — Two years ago, Samuel Cousins, a lifelong Mainer, was a student at Southern Maine Community College with a passion for biology but lacking the resources to properly express that passion.

“I got a really incredible education [at SMCC] but I didn’t have access to the kind of high-tier facilities that places like this use,” Cousins explained while sitting in a classroom on the campus of the MDI Biological Laboratory.

Lucky for Cousins, SMCC is part of a collaborative network of 17 research and academic institutions in Maine, led by the Bio Lab, that also includes The Jackson Laboratory, College of the Atlantic, MaineHealth Institute for Research and a number of other colleges and universities. Members of the network share resources, equipment, and data in the name of scientific advancement. The name of the network itself is a Russian Nesting Doll of acronyms: the Institutional Development Award (IDeA) Network of Biomedical Research Excellence, or INBRE for short.

That winter, Cousins applied for and was accepted into a week-long INBRE short course run by the lab aimed at giving undergraduates like himself a taste of what important biomedical research looks like.

“It was really an incredible experience for me because I was able to use all these techniques that I kind of learned about and read about in my books, but didn’t actually have any exposure to,” Cousins said. “Technology keeps on changing and improving in the biology world. And if you want to be in some sort of research capacity, you do have to have some understanding of how to use it, and you have to kind of get hands-on experience with it.”

An image depicting various cell types in live axolotl salamanders created by a microscopist at MDI Bio Lab. The axolotl is studied for its unique regenerative properties. Photo provided by MDI Biological Laboratory

After his experience with the short course, Cousins quickly applied for and was accepted into a 10-week summer course working in a lab run by Dr. Dustin Updike. This summer, Cousins was hired to work at the lab, studying tiny clear worms whose biology is surprisingly similar to humans. The team uses microscopy to study the even tinier structures within the worms and any disturbances within those structures that are linked to all sorts of diseases like ALS, dementia and Parkinson’s disease.

“It feels like a way that I can actually make change, meaningful change, by researching these things,” explained Cousins. “It’s also just the thrill of discovery and discovering how we work and different things work, and trying to bring people together through that is a very exciting thing and something I’m very grateful to be able to do for a job.”

Cousins is one of over 3,000 students in Maine who have benefited from INBRE programming, receiving hands-on biomedical research experiences. The goal of the network is to give students the skills they need to be better positioned for success in a future career as a biomedical researcher. It also helps those who are already researchers, in layman’s terms, do better science.

But better quality science is not something that is easily quantified on a profit and loss statement, which has put the federal funding that propped up the INBRE network at risk under the current transactionally-focused presidential administration.

The IDeA portion of INBRE is funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health. The program has received $107 million in direct federal funding since 2001, along with $122 million leveraged in additional grants. As a shareholder in this network, the government may look at this level of funding and say, “Where is our return on investment? What have you produced that we can profit off of?”

But scientific research is not an assembly line. It’s a long process full of stops and starts and wrong turns before you get to the breakthrough.

According to Dr. Hermann Haller, president of MDI Bio Lab since 2018, when a researcher applies for a research grant, they already have to have data. This means before they even write a grant application, it’s two years, sometimes three years of research. Then they apply for a grant. Hopefully they get an answer within six months and then start to work. The next two years they do the research that they have received the grant money for and then, if they are successful, they find something.

“Research is about making discovery. It’s not about, you know, you have something and you generate a product,” Dr. Haller explained. “This is why science is demanding and lots of hours are spent there. But this is also fascinating for young people. This is the beauty of science. You make a discovery and then once you have made a discovery, you keep the intellectual property, and you may apply for a patent, but I’ve just described a five-year process for you from the first start of this research project to a final product.”

The money that MDI Bio Lab expected for this latest round of funding for the INBRE network has not been frozen, but they have yet to receive it and have been left in the dark as to why. Dr. Haller is optimistic because the IDeA funds have started to flow in other states. He is also confident that Sen. Susan Collins, a longtime supporter of the program who invited Dr. Haller to testify in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this year on the topic, is fighting to make sure the funds are received.

But Dr. Haller says that the uncertainty created by the delay, and the opaque nature of the current administration’s priorities when it comes to scientific research, have the potential to create a chilling effect with wide-ranging consequences.

If we don’t repair this, we’ll lose a whole generation of young scientists,” said Dr. Haller. “At the moment we are speaking about one year, two years, and this actually means that a whole generation of young people will do something else because we can’t fund them.”

The lab has been able to keep its current slate of INBRE programming afloat through philanthropy. But private donations are a short-term solution, according to Dr. Haller, because they are not as consistent as grant funding should theoretically be.

Fundraising has allowed for this summer’s microscopy course at the Bio Lab to continue, which was good news for Sarah Petroulis, a biomedical researcher and teacher at the Hancock County Technical Center. Petroulis was one of a number of students — a mix between undergrads, grad students and professionals — who were accepted into this free program that provides a crash course in the use of some of the latest, high-tech microscopes that the Bio Lab has on campus. She represents that next generation of scientists who might be lost if the INBRE-supported programs were forced to fold.

“My students, they study biomedical science, from the research side all the way through clinical application, and microscopes are used all the way through right from the very beginning,” Petroulis explained. “And it’s something that I’m finding that universities are not doing well right now. There are really very few microscopy courses in a lot of institutions. So, that’s why I’m here. I’m here so that I can pass that knowledge along to my students. I worked in research science for 12 years and I’ve never had this depth of training before.”

Petroulis hopes to be able to instill in her students a sense of possibility, an understanding that the tools needed to solve the problems they encounter are out there, that scientific discovery is something attainable. She wants them to end up like Cousins.

“[The potential loss of funding] scares me a little bit because I know that the only reason I have this job in essence is because I had this INBRE funding, because it introduced me to this community and gave me these skills,” Cousins explained. “I don’t know where I would be without that opportunity. I do worry for the burgeoning youth who have a lot of potential, right? Or the potential to change all sorts of things, but can’t get that same prod or influence that will actually push them to do it. I’m a little scared for it.”