Two dozen Maine college students are investigating the public health effects of forever chemicals by using zebrafish as human stand-ins and water samples from private residential wells as part of a growing statewide biotech training program.

Students attending a weeklong conference at MDI Bio Lab are finding zebrafish — a favorite among medical researchers because they share 70% of our genes — suffer a higher rate of developmental delays and birth defects when grown in contaminated well water.

Kaleyn Pratt, 24, of Houlton, a first-year student at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, works on a research project at MDI Biological Laboratory on Wednesday. Pratt and other student scientists are studying the effects of forever chemicals on zebrafish, a species that shares important genetic characteristics with humans. Photo courtesy of MDI Biological Laboratory

“They’re hatching late,” said 24-year-old Kaleyn Pratt, a first-year student at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. “We’re looking for any defect, like a curved tail, but what we’re finding is the PFAS zebrafish are taking longer to break out of their little shells.”

However, the training program that organized the student PFAS conference is now at risk from proposed federal funding cuts. The National Institutes for Health has announced grant administration changes that would result in a 23% cut in annual funding, or $900,000, for Maine’s biotech training program.

Maine has joined other states to fight this change and other announced NIH cuts, but until that is sorted out, research institutions like MDI, The Jackson Laboratory and the University of Maine are left in limbo and wondering if they will have to reduce student learning opportunities or even lay off staff.

Led by MDI Bio Lab, the Idea Network of Biomedical Research Excellence, or INBRE, is made up of 17 research and educational institutions from the University of New England to the University of Maine at Fort Kent. Last year, NIH awarded a new five-year, $19.4 million grant to the consortium.

Since it began in 2001, Maine’s program has used $87 million in NIH funding to train 3,500 students. Of those students, 90% have pursued advanced degrees or careers in scientific or medical fields, with 21% of those remaining in Maine. The program will train 180 students this year.

In addition to training Maine students for high-paying biotech jobs, the program also funds research and mentorship to young faculty members to increase their competitiveness for independent NIH funding and improves the state’s research infrastructure with the latest technology and technical expertise.

Last month, however, the NIH announced it would limit how much grant money INBRE could use to pay for indirect costs like electricity, lab coats and salaries for techs who feed research animals. The INBRE program had negotiated a 69% reimbursement rate; NIH now wants a 15% cap.

MDI Bio Lab’s indirect costs are comparable with what other research institutions have reported and are audited by third-party monitors, according to outreach director Elisabeth Marnik. With 17 members across the state, INBRE has significant paperwork, housing and travel costs, she said.

“The measure would slow, and in some cases end, front-line biomedical research projects,” Marnik said. “It would severely limit training opportunities for college students and early career scientists. Perhaps most dishearteningly, it would imperil the job stability of the dedicated people in our workforce.”

For now, MDI Bio Lab’s program directors are hoping for the best, assuming the indirect cost cap will be thrown out by the courts and they can continue to train the next generation of scientists to join the state’s growing biotech sector and investigate local public health problems like forever chemical contamination.

EMPHASIS ON KIDNEY DISEASE

MDI Bio Lab has a long history of research into kidney disease and developing new diagnostic and therapeutic tools to treat it. For example, professor Iain Drummond is working on kidney replacement tissue, exploring how to connect lab-grown kidney tissue to an organism’s circulatory system.

He noted that zebrafish placed in the local well water samples — one with 50 parts per trillion of forever chemicals and another at 200 parts per trillion — showed pretty severe kidney damage in just three days, explaining why kidney disease is one of the most common side effects of exposure.

“The results were off the charts, just blazing!” Drummond said as he watched the students work. “It was shocking how much inflammatory response there was to water that people had been drinking. We think it may be because kidneys purify the blood and they concentrate environmental toxins.”

One of the other reasons why zebrafish make for good human stand-ins when it comes to medical research is that their eggs are laid and fertilized externally, which allows their genetic makeup to be easily manipulated to better study disease and try out potential cures.

Drummond wants to isolate which specific forever chemical, at what exact threshold, injures the kidney, and then begin to manipulate the fish to see if interventions can be found that work on zebrafish that might one day be used to help the people who have been drinking that well water for years.

“It’s exciting,” said Drummond, rubbing his hands together. “The little zebrafish could hold the solution.”

But that will require a lot of additional research, and that research requires continued NIH funding.

“I’d like to think the program is so vital to the nation that we wouldn’t lose it altogether, but if we did, I don’t know what would happen to the future of science,” said Jane Disney, an MDI Bio Lab professor of environmental health who helped lead this week’s PFAS program.

CONCERN FOR FUTURE SCIENTISTS

“The program helps to fund research capacity, train students, and provide funds for young scientists to get their labs off the ground,” Disney said. “I could see there sort of be a bottoming out of that next generation of scientists. There would be a huge gap for sure.”

Disney talked about the value of the INBRE program with campus visitors while answering student questions about the days-old zebrafish they were studying under microscopes. Some had as many questions about the suddenly fragile future of biotech as they did about the experiment.

Many of the students arrived at the conference unfamiliar with forever chemicals — manmade per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, found in household and industrial products that can be toxic to humans even in trace amounts — and walked away planning to test their own home well water.

Tatiana Arce, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, lives on campus, where there is public water, but she said she will ask her parents to test the well water at their Woodland home — after she tells them all about using MDI’s lab equipment to conduct actual scientific research.

“This is something I just can’t do in Fort Kent,” Arce said, gesturing at the row of microscopes and the team of MDI faculty circulating around the lab. “This is what science is supposed to be. And I like that we’re working on a Maine problem.”

Maine’s biotech sector — about 500 companies employing 10,000 people — is growing rapidly.

According to the Bioscience Association of Maine, life sciences jobs in the state grew by 42% between 2017 and 2022. Comparatively, Maine’s total job growth over that period was 1%. Maine’s life science job growth also outpaced the rest of New England between 2016 and 2021.