Latest news with #HealthProfessionalsFollowUpStudy
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
Harvard will destroy 1.5million samples that could hold the key to stopping colon cancer epidemic
Fifty years of Harvard research is set to be flushed down the toilet. Since 1976, the university has collected more than 1.5million samples of human feces, urine, toenails, saliva, hair and blood from people for scientific research, allowing them to track how bodies change over time. Researchers behind the project say it could reveal key mutations that lead to cancer or habits that could help someone live longer. Dr Walter Willet, a physician who has been with the project since 1977, said the collection could also be a treasure trove of information on the reasons for the colon cancer surge in young people. But now, all of these possibilities are set to be lost after three grants to support the project — worth $5million per year — were cut by the Trump administration. Dr Willet has managed to secure emergency funding from Harvard for the collection but says this could run out within weeks. If more funds aren't raised, he said, then it's likely that the collection will be packed into plastic biohazard bags and shipped off to an incinerator — along with the valuable information it contains. 'We can't let that happen,' Dr Willit told 'we are working hard to make sure the resources are not lost'. The database — called the Harvard biorepository — holds samples from more than 200,000 women and men who took part in Harvard-led studies. This includes participants in the Nurses Health Study, 121,000 women tracked since 1976, and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, tracking 51,000 men since 1986. For both studies, participants were asked to fill in bi-annual surveys on their diet, exercise and health — allowing researchers to detect factors that may raise someone's risk of suffering from a disease like cancer. More than 10,000 participants have already died, but scientists are continuing to carry out the surveys on those who are alive — some over 95 years old — hoping to detect hidden clues to longevity. Since 1982, the researchers have also been collecting biological samples from the participants to add further data to their project. From the Nurses Health Study, the database currently holds 62,000 toenail clippings, 50,000 urine samples, 30,000 saliva samples, 20,000 hair samples and more than 16,000 samples of feces collected between 1982 and 2019. It also holds an estimated 1.5million blood samples from more than 30,000 participants, and tissue samples from 16 cancers that emerged in participants during the study. From the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, it includes blood samples from more than 18,000 participants and more than 1,700 samples of tissue from cancers including prostate cancer. The Nurses Health Study has already resulted in the publication of more than 400 cancer-related studies, nearly 300 projects and participation in 33 cancer consortia. Top studies include a 2007 paper that found higher levels of inflammation-linked proteins in the blood raised the risk of colon cancer, and a 2004 paper that found people with higher levels of vitamin D in their blood had a lower risk of colon cancer. There are also early studies into the gut microbiomes of participants based on analysis of stool samples collected from 2019. While it is still too soon for these to reveal reasons for the surge in colon cancer cases, they hold promise Other notable findings include a 2003 paper that found postmenopausal women with higher estrogen levels had a higher risk of breast cancer. And a 1995 analysis of toenail clippings that suggested people with lower levels of selenium in their diets — a nutrient found in nuts — may have a higher risk of lung cancer, although this was later disputed by other research. Data from the studies' questionnaires has also been used in recent years to suggest that suggests a diet high in red meat could raise the risk of type 2 diabetes. And studies that linked a higher consumption of trans fats — a type of fat that influences cholesterol and that is used in cookies, pies and other bakery products — to a higher risk of coronary heart disease. The work was instrumental in the 2018 FDA ban on hydrogenated oils — which are used to make trans fats — in the US. The samples are stored in up to 60 large cylindrical freezers that are five-foot tall by five-foot wide housed in two locations at Harvard. It is split across two locations to protect the collection in case of an incident like a fire. The toenails and hair are not frozen because they do not degrade easily, Dr Willit said, meaning they are comparatively easy to store. But the rest of the collection is kept in the freezers that constantly have liquid nitrogen pumped through them — which has a temperature of -320F (-196C) — to preserve the samples. Running the freezers alone costs about $300,000 a year, Dr Willit said. The team receives several dozen requests a year for access to the collection from scientists, he added. In response, samples are either shipped to the scientists or the team undertakes the research in their lab and sends the scientists the results. Researchers are also constantly adding to the collection, collecting cancer samples from patients when the disease emerges and new data via surveys. So far, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation in New York has agreed to offer funding to preserve the cancer samples from the Nurses Health Study. It is not clear how long this funding will last. But Dr Willit says they are continuing to avidly seek backers for the samples in the rest of the collection. The database was supported by three federal grants from the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health. It comes amid a mammoth battle between the Trump administration and Harvard University, that has seen more than $3billion in grants cut from America's wealthiest institution. In the latest salvo, a federal judge has blocked the Trump administration's effort to keep Harvard from hosting foreign students — who make up approximately 27 percent of its student body. The administration has repeatedly accused the university of doing too little to fight anti-semitism on its campuses and to stem pro-Palestine protests that disrupted some classes in 2024 and 2025.
CNN
08-05-2025
- Health
- CNN
Exclusive: Treasure trove of biological data that transformed science may be lost to Trump funding cuts
Donald TrumpFacebookTweetLink Follow A priceless treasure trove of biodata gathered from generations of Americans by Harvard University researchers may soon be lost due to additional funding cuts by the Trump administration, a leading nutrition researcher told CNN. The latest round of cuts to Harvard by the Trump administration will halt funding for the upkeep of dozens of giant freezers filled with DNA, blood, urine, stool and tissue samples used for ongoing research, said Dr. Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. Researchers gathered the samples over decades as part of the Nurse's Health Study, one of the largest and longest investigations ever done on women's risk factors for chronic disease. Another long-term study, the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, has chronicled the health and diet of men via questionnaires. 'We've been following almost 300,000 women and another 50,000 men for about 45 years,' said Willett, who has published over 2,000 original research papers and reviews on the link between nutrition and health. The biological samples and data from both studies have led to major advances in science, including the discovery of the dangers of trans fats and the subsequent ban from the US food supply; the link between obesity and breast cancer, even in adolescents; and the connection between cigarette smoking and heart disease. 'We are scrambling to try to protect the samples and the data we have,' Willett said. 'We can't last more than a few weeks, a couple of months, depending on which aspect of the study we're talking about. But we're on a short timeline now, unless we get some additional funding.' Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which receives 46% of its funding from the federal government, was already reeling from the $2.2 billion cuts in federal grants and contracts announced by the Trump administration in mid-April. 'The federal government has a responsibility to ensure that taxpayer dollars do not flow to institutions that allow open harassment of Jewish students or tolerate antisemitic intimidation,' said Andrew Nixon, director of communications for the US Department of Health and Human Services, which manages research grants to institutions. 'That includes Harvard. No university will be given a pass on ignoring civil rights. If Harvard wants continued federal support, it must uphold basic standards of safety, lawfulness, and equal protection — for all students, including Jewish students. That is non-negotiable,' Nixon said in an email. However, the carefully preserved biological samples, accompanied by decades of disease follow-up data, offer tremendous opportunities for research, said Dr. Wei Zheng, an assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. He has used the Harvard data in his research. 'They are fundamental to identifying biomarkers for early detection of diseases, understanding risk factors, and informing effective prevention strategies, Zheng said in an email. 'The irreplaceable nature of these samples underscores their critical role in advancing medical knowledge and improving public health outcomes.' The biodata from the Nurse's Health Study sits in row after row of large freezers, kept cold by liquid nitrogen, an expense that Willett says adds up to several hundred thousand dollars a year. That amount doesn't include funds for staff who access and analyze the samples or supplies for the labs where the work is done. 'We have blood that we use for DNA — we can look at nutrients in those samples, hormones. We have urine samples where we can measure other things, contaminants, for example, that are excreted. We have toenail clippings that are good for trace metals,' Willett explained. 'We have stool samples and oral samples that can be used for microbiome analysis that have been collected specifically for that purpose,' he added. 'We also have tumor tissues from many thousands of women who developed breast cancer, so we can go back and look at the specific characteristics in those cancer tissues.' Willett and his team were the first to link alcohol consumption, even in modest amounts, to breast cancer — alcohol use is now widely considered a known risk factor for a cancer that kills over 42,000 women a year. Data from the long-term studies can also inform and even change prior research. Research by the prestigious Framingham Heart Study in the 1970s and 1980s concluded that 'smoking was a risk factor for heart disease in men, but not in women,' Willett said. Data from the Nurse's Health Study, however, found the link applied to women as well. It's not just Willett's team members who access this data. 'We have several hundred investigators around the US, and some in other countries, too, that use this for their own research. It really is a national resource,' he said. There is also exciting research yet to come. Some study participants are now reaching 100 years old, and the data will soon be able to determine what behaviors over the decades may lead to longer lives — research Willett said will never happen if the thousands of dollars needed to keep the work safe disappears. 'One of the really big questions people have is: 'How could I live to 95, or 100, and still have good cognitive function, good physical function?' And we're just coming to that point in our study where we can do that,' he said. 'In the younger part of the cohort, we've also collected data on what they were consuming during their adolescent years, and so just now, we're starting to get a good view of what people were eating while they were teenagers. How is that related to cancer?' The elimination of all research grants to Harvard was announced Monday evening in a three-page letter to the university from Education Secretary Linda McMahon. In that letter, she accused Harvard of 'ugly racism' and 'violating federal law,' and said the university will 'cease to be a publicly funded institution and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution.' 'I'm not too sure why people would suffer when Harvard has a $53 billion endowment that I believe they could fund a lot of these projects with, and there are donors who are very willing to give large amounts of money to Harvard,' McMahon told CNBC's Sara Eisen on Tuesday. University endowments aren't as easy to access as bank accounts. Most funds have to be maintained in perpetuity and access is largely restricted, often by stipulations from donors. About 80% of Harvard's $53.2 billion endowment is earmarked for financial aid, scholarships, faculty chairs, academic programs or other projects, according to the school. The remaining 20% is intended to sustain the institution for years to come. Harvard says it has been funding nearly two-thirds of its operating expenses from other sources, including federal research grants and student tuition. The university has filed a lawsuit in Boston federal court against the administration, saying it 'will not surrender its independence or its constitutional rights.' 'The Government has not — and cannot — identify any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, technological, and other research it has frozen that aims to save American lives, foster American success, preserve American security, and maintain America's position as a global leader in innovation,' the lawsuit said. CNN's Kara Scannell and Eric Levenson contributed to this report.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Exclusive: Treasure trove of biological data that transformed science may be lost to Trump funding cuts
A priceless treasure trove of biodata gathered from generations of Americans by Harvard University researchers may soon be lost due to additional funding cuts by the Trump administration, a leading nutrition researcher told CNN. The latest round of cuts to Harvard by the Trump administration will halt funding for the upkeep of dozens of giant freezers filled with DNA, blood, urine, stool and tissue samples used for ongoing research, said Dr. Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. Researchers gathered the samples over decades as part of the Nurse's Health Study, one of the largest and longest investigations ever done on women's risk factors for chronic disease. Another long-term study, the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, has chronicled the health and diet of men via questionnaires. 'We've been following almost 300,000 women and another 50,000 men for about 45 years,' said Willett, who has published over 2,000 original research papers and reviews on the link between nutrition and health. The biological samples and data from both studies have led to major advances in science, including the discovery of the dangers of trans fats and the subsequent ban from the US food supply; the link between obesity and breast cancer, even in adolescents; and the connection between cigarette smoking and heart disease. 'We are scrambling to try to protect the samples and the data we have,' Willett said. 'We can't last more than a few weeks, a couple of months, depending on which aspect of the study we're talking about. But we're on a short timeline now, unless we get some additional funding.' Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which receives 46% of its funding from the federal government, was already reeling from the $2.2 billion cuts in federal grants and contracts announced by the Trump administration in mid-April. 'The federal government has a responsibility to ensure that taxpayer dollars do not flow to institutions that allow open harassment of Jewish students or tolerate antisemitic intimidation,' said Andrew Nixon, director of communications for the US Department of Health and Human Services, which manages research grants to institutions. 'That includes Harvard. No university will be given a pass on ignoring civil rights. If Harvard wants continued federal support, it must uphold basic standards of safety, lawfulness, and equal protection — for all students, including Jewish students. That is non-negotiable,' Nixon said in an email. However, the carefully preserved biological samples, accompanied by decades of disease follow-up data, offer tremendous opportunities for research, said Dr. Wei Zheng, an assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. He has used the Harvard data in his research. 'They are fundamental to identifying biomarkers for early detection of diseases, understanding risk factors, and informing effective prevention strategies, Zheng said in an email. 'The irreplaceable nature of these samples underscores their critical role in advancing medical knowledge and improving public health outcomes.' The biodata from the Nurse's Health Study sits in row after row of large freezers, kept cold by liquid nitrogen, an expense that Willett says adds up to several hundred thousand dollars a year. That amount doesn't include funds for staff who access and analyze the samples or supplies for the labs where the work is done. 'We have blood that we use for DNA — we can look at nutrients in those samples, hormones. We have urine samples where we can measure other things, contaminants, for example, that are excreted. We have toenail clippings that are good for trace metals,' Willett explained. 'We have stool samples and oral samples that can be used for microbiome analysis that have been collected specifically for that purpose,' he added. 'We also have tumor tissues from many thousands of women who developed breast cancer, so we can go back and look at the specific characteristics in those cancer tissues.' Willett and his team were the first to link alcohol consumption, even in modest amounts, to breast cancer — alcohol use is now widely considered a known risk factor for a cancer that kills over 42,000 women a year. Data from the long-term studies can also inform and even change prior research. Research by the prestigious Framingham Heart Study in the 1970s and 1980s concluded that 'smoking was a risk factor for heart disease in men, but not in women,' Willett said. Data from the Nurse's Health Study, however, found the link applied to women as well. It's not just Willett's team members who access this data. 'We have several hundred investigators around the US, and some in other countries, too, that use this for their own research. It really is a national resource,' he said. There is also exciting research yet to come. Some study participants are now reaching 100 years old, and the data will soon be able to determine what behaviors over the decades may lead to longer lives — research Willett said will never happen if the thousands of dollars needed to keep the work safe disappears. 'One of the really big questions people have is: 'How could I live to 95, or 100, and still have good cognitive function, good physical function?' And we're just coming to that point in our study where we can do that,' he said. 'In the younger part of the cohort, we've also collected data on what they were consuming during their adolescent years, and so just now, we're starting to get a good view of what people were eating while they were teenagers. How is that related to cancer?' The elimination of all research grants to Harvard was announced Monday evening in a three-page letter to the university from Education Secretary Linda McMahon. In that letter, she accused Harvard of 'ugly racism' and 'violating federal law,' and said the university will 'cease to be a publicly funded institution and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution.' 'I'm not too sure why people would suffer when Harvard has a $53 billion endowment that I believe they could fund a lot of these projects with, and there are donors who are very willing to give large amounts of money to Harvard,' McMahon told CNBC's Sara Eisen on Tuesday. University endowments aren't as easy to access as bank accounts. Most funds have to be maintained in perpetuity and access is largely restricted, often by stipulations from donors. About 80% of Harvard's $53.2 billion endowment is earmarked for financial aid, scholarships, faculty chairs, academic programs or other projects, according to the school. The remaining 20% is intended to sustain the institution for years to come. Harvard says it has been funding nearly two-thirds of its operating expenses from other sources, including federal research grants and student tuition. The university has filed a lawsuit in Boston federal court against the administration, saying it 'will not surrender its independence or its constitutional rights.' 'The Government has not — and cannot — identify any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, technological, and other research it has frozen that aims to save American lives, foster American success, preserve American security, and maintain America's position as a global leader in innovation,' the lawsuit said. CNN's Kara Scannell and Eric Levenson contributed to this report.
CNN
08-05-2025
- Health
- CNN
Exclusive: Treasure trove of biological data that transformed science may be lost to Trump funding cuts
Donald TrumpFacebookTweetLink Follow A priceless treasure trove of biodata gathered from generations of Americans by Harvard University researchers may soon be lost due to additional funding cuts by the Trump administration, a leading nutrition researcher told CNN. The latest round of cuts to Harvard by the Trump administration will halt funding for the upkeep of dozens of giant freezers filled with DNA, blood, urine, stool and tissue samples used for ongoing research, said Dr. Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. Researchers gathered the samples over decades as part of the Nurse's Health Study, one of the largest and longest investigations ever done on women's risk factors for chronic disease. Another long-term study, the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, has chronicled the health and diet of men via questionnaires. 'We've been following almost 300,000 women and another 50,000 men for about 45 years,' said Willett, who has published over 2,000 original research papers and reviews on the link between nutrition and health. The biological samples and data from both studies have led to major advances in science, including the discovery of the dangers of trans fats and the subsequent ban from the US food supply; the link between obesity and breast cancer, even in adolescents; and the connection between cigarette smoking and heart disease. 'We are scrambling to try to protect the samples and the data we have,' Willett said. 'We can't last more than a few weeks, a couple of months, depending on which aspect of the study we're talking about. But we're on a short timeline now, unless we get some additional funding.' Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which receives 46% of its funding from the federal government, was already reeling from the $2.2 billion cuts in federal grants and contracts announced by the Trump administration in mid-April. 'The federal government has a responsibility to ensure that taxpayer dollars do not flow to institutions that allow open harassment of Jewish students or tolerate antisemitic intimidation,' said Andrew Nixon, director of communications for the US Department of Health and Human Services, which manages research grants to institutions. 'That includes Harvard. No university will be given a pass on ignoring civil rights. If Harvard wants continued federal support, it must uphold basic standards of safety, lawfulness, and equal protection — for all students, including Jewish students. That is non-negotiable,' Nixon said in an email. However, the carefully preserved biological samples, accompanied by decades of disease follow-up data, offer tremendous opportunities for research, said Dr. Wei Zheng, an assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. He has used the Harvard data in his research. 'They are fundamental to identifying biomarkers for early detection of diseases, understanding risk factors, and informing effective prevention strategies, Zheng said in an email. 'The irreplaceable nature of these samples underscores their critical role in advancing medical knowledge and improving public health outcomes.' The biodata from the Nurse's Health Study sits in row after row of large freezers, kept cold by liquid nitrogen, an expense that Willett says adds up to several hundred thousand dollars a year. That amount doesn't include funds for staff who access and analyze the samples or supplies for the labs where the work is done. 'We have blood that we use for DNA — we can look at nutrients in those samples, hormones. We have urine samples where we can measure other things, contaminants, for example, that are excreted. We have toenail clippings that are good for trace metals,' Willett explained. 'We have stool samples and oral samples that can be used for microbiome analysis that have been collected specifically for that purpose,' he added. 'We also have tumor tissues from many thousands of women who developed breast cancer, so we can go back and look at the specific characteristics in those cancer tissues.' Willett and his team were the first to link alcohol consumption, even in modest amounts, to breast cancer — alcohol use is now widely considered a known risk factor for a cancer that kills over 42,000 women a year. Data from the long-term studies can also inform and even change prior research. Research by the prestigious Framingham Heart Study in the 1970s and 1980s concluded that 'smoking was a risk factor for heart disease in men, but not in women,' Willett said. Data from the Nurse's Health Study, however, found the link applied to women as well. It's not just Willett's team members who access this data. 'We have several hundred investigators around the US, and some in other countries, too, that use this for their own research. It really is a national resource,' he said. There is also exciting research yet to come. Some study participants are now reaching 100 years old, and the data will soon be able to determine what behaviors over the decades may lead to longer lives — research Willett said will never happen if the thousands of dollars needed to keep the work safe disappears. 'One of the really big questions people have is: 'How could I live to 95, or 100, and still have good cognitive function, good physical function?' And we're just coming to that point in our study where we can do that,' he said. 'In the younger part of the cohort, we've also collected data on what they were consuming during their adolescent years, and so just now, we're starting to get a good view of what people were eating while they were teenagers. How is that related to cancer?' The elimination of all research grants to Harvard was announced Monday evening in a three-page letter to the university from Education Secretary Linda McMahon. In that letter, she accused Harvard of 'ugly racism' and 'violating federal law,' and said the university will 'cease to be a publicly funded institution and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution.' 'I'm not too sure why people would suffer when Harvard has a $53 billion endowment that I believe they could fund a lot of these projects with, and there are donors who are very willing to give large amounts of money to Harvard,' McMahon told CNBC's Sara Eisen on Tuesday. University endowments aren't as easy to access as bank accounts. Most funds have to be maintained in perpetuity and access is largely restricted, often by stipulations from donors. About 80% of Harvard's $53.2 billion endowment is earmarked for financial aid, scholarships, faculty chairs, academic programs or other projects, according to the school. The remaining 20% is intended to sustain the institution for years to come. Harvard says it has been funding nearly two-thirds of its operating expenses from other sources, including federal research grants and student tuition. The university has filed a lawsuit in Boston federal court against the administration, saying it 'will not surrender its independence or its constitutional rights.' 'The Government has not — and cannot — identify any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, technological, and other research it has frozen that aims to save American lives, foster American success, preserve American security, and maintain America's position as a global leader in innovation,' the lawsuit said. CNN's Kara Scannell and Eric Levenson contributed to this report.
