Inside a cancer research laboratory on the campus of Harvard Medical School, two dozen small jars with pink plastic lids sat on a metal counter. Inside these humble-looking jars is the core of Joan Brugge’s current multiyear research project.
Brugge lifted up one of the jars and gazed at it with reverence. Each jar holds samples of breast tissue donated by patients after they underwent a tissue biopsy or breast surgery — samples that may reveal a new way to prevent breast cancer.
Brugge and her research team have analyzed the cell structure of more than 100 samples.
Using high-powered microscopes and complex computer algorithms, they diagram each stage in the development of breast cancer: from the first sign of cell mutation to the formation of tiny clusters, well before they are large enough to be considered tumors.
Their quest is to prevent breast cancer, a disease that afflicts roughly 1 in 8 U.S. women over their lifetimes, as well as some men. Their ultimate goal is to relieve the pain, suffering, and risk of death that accompany this disease. And their painstaking work, unspooling across six years of a seven-year, $7 million federal grant, has yielded results.
In late 2024, Brugge and her colleagues identified specific cells in breast tissue that contain the genetic seeds of breast tumors.
And they discovered that these “seed cells” are surprisingly common. In fact, they are present in the normal, healthy tissue of every breast sample …