“I Never Imagined I Could Be a Scientist”

The federal government has terminated numerous federally funded grants and contracts to Harvard and is scaling back investments in scientific and medical research across the country. In this series, Harvard Medical School scientists discuss how these actions are affecting their research and their labs.

My lab works on the microbe Staphylococcus aureus. We’re especially interested in a strain of staph known as MRSA — that’s methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. 

It’s a concerning variant of a common bacterium that has learned how to survive some of the most important antibiotics we use to treat bacterial infections. It’s also one of the deadliest antibiotic-resistant pathogens worldwide. And it’s particularly nasty because it can take someone who is otherwise healthy and make them very sick, even kill them, very quickly. My lab is interested in understanding how S. aureus grows and divides and in coming up with new ways to kill it.

I collaborate with a number of other labs across Harvard that are also interested in the problem of antimicrobial resistance. There is an incredibly vibrant community here that has collectively made many fundamental contributions to understanding bacterial physiology and pathogenesis and the evolution of resistance and to discovering new targets and antibacterial compounds.

I want to mention one ongoing collaboration in particular. The NIH has funding mechanisms to support collaborative research focused on specific areas, such as antimicrobial resistance. My lab and four other labs at Harvard received a collaborative grant called a U19 to develop innovative strategies to address the growing threat of antibiotic resistance. Our team includes geneticists David Rudner and Tom Bernhardt in the HMS Department of Microbiology, structural biologist Andrew Kruse in the HMS Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, and Daniel Kahne from the Harvard University Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology.

As this research program grinds to a halt, it’s hard to imagine what that will mean in the long term for the fight against drug-resistant bacteria.

We’re interested in finding new approaches to either kill drug-resistant bacteria outright or to make resistant strains of bacteria sensitive to antibiotics again. We all have different scientific expertise, and we approach problems in very different ways. Together, the labs have built a thriving community that has made several novel contributions to this area of science. We were looking forward to doing a lot more. Unfortunately, our collaborative grant was recently terminated (along with the individual grants of each principal investigator). The trainees that were part of the collaboration are no longer funded.

When you are thinking of taking someone into your lab as a trainee, you ask them what they want to get out of the experience. And then you ask yourself, “Can I help this person get to the next step in their career and life?” That’s a big responsibility, and I take it very personally. I never thought I would be in a position where I cannot protect my trainees.

In my lab, I have had undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs from all kinds of backgrounds — red states, blue states, purple states, other countries, cities, very rural places. Many have come from modest means. Every one of them found their way here not because of where they came from but because they worked incredibly hard and did really well at each opportunity. Some people portray Harvard as an elitist place, but my experience is that most people here are far from elitist. We are scientists who just want to get our work done in a scientific environment that is almost magical. And now, for some of us, it is already over.

When I was growing up, I never imagined I could be a scientist. I spent my early years on St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea. The population was mostly Aleut. My mother taught in the school and my father was the island doctor. He was a pediatrician, but he treated everyone. After that we spent a few years in Crownpoint, New Mexico, which is part of the Navajo Nation. Then we lived in California for a while before moving back to New Mexico, this time to Gallup, an old railroad town that straddled Route 66.

There were not many opportunities to study science. But I had the good fortune to encounter a social worker who had gone to the University of Chicago. She told me it was a good school and encouraged me to apply, so I did. My first week there I had to take placement tests for math and science so they could figure out what courses I belonged in. The test for the physical sciences had page after page of multiple-choice questions, and I distinctly remember that I answered zero of them. I knew nothing.

The one question I specifically recall was, “What is Avogadro’s number?” And I remember thinking, “Who knows this stuff?”

I look back at that moment now with some embarrassment because Avogadro’s number is a fundamental concept in chemistry — it is the number of atoms or molecules in a mole of any substance, and chemists use moles when they calculate the concentration of a solution.

I got over being intimidated, took some science classes, and discovered that I really liked figuring out how to solve problems. I eventually got a PhD in chemistry.

Right now, I’m focused on figuring out how to continue the research. Even though Harvard is trying to provide bridge funding, it’s clear that it won’t be able to replace all of the funding that is lost. Some of the science will have to stop. As this research program we’ve been building for years grinds to a halt, it’s hard to imagine what that will mean in the long term for the fight against drug-resistant bacteria.

There’s also the risk that we may lose our ability to track the spread of resistant pathogens, with cuts to CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] staffing and reports that the CDC has taken down information about which strains of resistant bacteria are circulating. That can make it difficult for doctors to know which antibiotics or combinations of antibiotics to use.

There’s so much uncertainty that it’s very unsettling and not just for me personally or for Harvard. MRSA is something that should be a concern to everyone but especially those with parents over 65, who are at heightened risk, and anyone who has to have a procedure in a hospital. And beyond MRSA, we don’t really know what’s going to happen to research on pathogens in general.

What’s striking me most in this moment is the human cost of these cuts. The scientists at Harvard form a community. Disrupting that community and its work obviously hurts those who are immediately affected, some of whom will lose their jobs and maybe their dreams. But it will also have reverberating effects on future generations of scientists, on health care, and on the economy. The shock we’re feeling now is just the first hint of what could be a terrible problem downstream.

Suzanne Walker is the Elizabeth D. Hay Professor of Cell Biology in the HMS Department of Microbiology.