Iowa native and cancer researcher on funding cuts and hope for the future

Born and raised in Iowa, Claire Brown grew up fascinated by science thanks to inspiring teachers in Waukee.

After earning degrees in biology and political science from Brown University, she joined the National Cancer Institute — where her passion for cancer research took root. Now pursuing an M.D.-Ph.D. at Harvard/MIT, Brown has experienced both sides of the cancer fight: as a researcher and as a patient, following her own diagnosis with adenoid cystic carcinoma.

Brown spoke with The Gazette about how that journey shaped her, why continued investment in medical research matters, and what’s at stake for Iowans as federal funding cuts ripple through labs and hospitals nationwide.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: Can you talk a little about your upbringing in Iowa and how it shaped your interest in science?

Brown said she spent her entire childhood in Iowa — born in Iowa City and raised in Waukee, where she graduated from high school in 2018. She credited her high school chemistry and biology teachers, “two really amazing, strong women,” with inspiring her to pursue science.

After graduation, she attended Brown University in Rhode Island, studying biology and political science and researching the gut microbiome — “the bacteria that help us metabolize the food that we eat, and how that relates to conditions like diabetes and other metabolic disorders.” She later worked full time at the National Cancer Institute, where she said she “fell in love with doing cancer research” and first realized “the urgency and the importance of that work.”

While working there, she shadowed oncologists and interacted with patients “who were receiving chemotherapy, who were getting … the newest types of immunotherapies that we have for oncology patients.”

“And so I was just like, really struck by how important it is” and “how few treatment options we have.”

Just before starting medical school, she discovered a lump on her face that was later diagnosed as adenoid cystic carcinoma.

“I went through two surgeries, and then the same day that I started school and had my white coat ceremony was also my first day of radiation,” she said. Brown underwent 33 rounds of radiation while beginning her M.D.-Ph.D. program and has since been in remission.

Q: How has living through your own cancer diagnosis changed how you view your research?

Brown said the experience gave her a new perspective on both the science and the emotional side of cancer care.

“When I got my diagnosis, I was actually not scared when I first got the phone call,” she said. “My first thought was, oh, the scientists, the researchers, the doctors — they have answers.” But as she began reading studies on her rare cancer, she realized “we don’t really understand cancer, or we don’t really have good ways to predict if a tumor will recur.”

She said living through daily radiation treatments and spending time alongside other patients “made me feel there’s a much more emotional and personal drive behind my research. I feel really compelled to do it for patients like them and patients like me.”

Q: How do funding cuts affect young researchers like you — and the next generation of patients?

Brown emphasized that research is a long-term investment, noting that today’s discoveries may not become treatments for another 10 or 15 years.

“The things that I’m working on right now will likely become therapies closer to 10 or 15 years down the road,” she said. “So it’s like my kids, if they get diagnosed with cancer, who won’t have the therapies and won’t have access to the developments that I’m making right now if we halt research.”

As a student, she said funding gaps “really hamper my development and the development of my classmates.” Without access to clinical samples or the ability to conduct experiments, “we’re effectively handicapping the physicians who are going to take care of, for example, my parents when they get older.”

Q: What ripple effects do these funding reductions have beyond places like Harvard?

Brown said the impact extends nationwide because “science is not done in a silo.”

“When someone makes a discovery, whether it’s at Harvard or whether it’s at Iowa, it doesn’t stay sequestered in that one hospital system,” she said. “There’s a massive amount of information sharing that goes on between all of these different institutions.”

“Science is really a collaborative — it’s a team sport,” she added. “We all have the same end goal in mind, which is reduce suffering, improve the lives of our patients.”

Q: You’ve worked on cell-based cancer therapies at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's pediatric oncology research division. What promise do those hold — and what happens to that progress if funding disappears or is scaled back?

Brown described the promise of emerging immunotherapies such as CAR T-cell therapy, which uses a patient’s own immune cells to target cancer.

“These are problems that are definitely surmountable,” she said, “but we have to keep working at them. We have to keep doing research. We have to keep optimizing how can we build a better CAR T-cell? How can we build better therapies?”

She also discussed her lab’s research on infant immune systems, which she said may hold clues to developing more resilient cancer treatments.

“Babies’ immune systems are really resilient against low oxygen settings. They're really resilient against what we consider to be metabolically hostile settings,” she said, common characteristics of a tumor micro environment.

“So what you would find in cancer,” Brown said. “If we can figure out what’s going on with why these baby immune cells can operate differently in these challenging environments, we might be able to engineer better therapies that are more resilient against cancer.”

She added: “I also think that just understanding the basic mechanisms that drive baby immunity … can also help us intervene earlier in pediatric cancer.”

Q: What’s at stake for Iowans if cancer research funding continues to decline?

Brown said the risks are both medical and economic. “Science is a really important component of Iowa’s economy, especially when you think about how large the University of Iowa is as an employer,” she said.

But the larger concern, she noted, is health. “There are only two states in the entire U.S. where rates of cancer are on the rise, and it’s us and Kentucky,” she said. “If we get rid of research funding, we won’t be able to keep asking the questions of why these rates are on the rise, what can we do to fix them, how can we improve access for Iowans.”

Q: Despite these challenges, what gives you hope about the future of cancer research?

Brown said she draws hope from her community of scientists and patients.

“I’ve been in touch with M.D.-Ph.D. students and med students and Ph.D. students across the country,” she said. “It’s really heartening to know there are a lot of other people like me who care deeply about this.”

She added that interacting with patients keeps her motivated. “Knowing that there are real human beings behind all of the work that I do — it really makes me want to work harder and to find answers.”

Q: What do you hope your work will mean for patients back home in Iowa?

Brown said her goal is to make a difference that extends beyond her own practice.

“One of the reasons that I went into science in the first place is because I think being a doctor will be really fulfilling and really great, but also there's only a finite number of patients that I can see in a day, and I wanted to make a larger impact,” she said.

Her biggest hope is to develop therapies that make the comorbidities associated with cancer treatment a little bit more tolerable — “that I can help save lives, that I can help people diagnose cancer earlier, to prevent things like what I had to go through.”

“And I hope that those percolate and those ripple back to Iowa, and that whatever therapies I develop here, we start to see in the Stead Family Children's Hospital, at Blank Children's at Broadlawns — you name it.”

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