The Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) has more than 125 members from across the Illinois campus. Given the great variety in backgrounds, research disciplines, and experiences of our members, we offer our Q&A series “Get to Know a Cancer Researcher” to provide readers a connection with the amazing array of individuals who comprise the CCIL’s robust cancer research team. This is the seventh installment.
CCIL Member: Bruce W. Fouke
CCIL Research Program: Cancer Technology and Data Science
CCIL Research Theme: Molecular Measurement
Faculty Position: Ralph E. Grim Endowed Professor
Campus Affiliations: Earth Science & Environmental Change; Cancer Center at Illinois; Evolution, Ecology and Behavior; Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies; European Union Center; and Russia, East European and Eurasian Center
What originally drew you to cancer research?
My lab’s establishment of a GeoBioMed approach, which combines the fields of geology, biology, and medicine, has been in development for more than 40 years. GeoBioMed is rooted in an understanding that the human body is a microcosm of natural Earth mineralization processes that influence organ system etiology and pathology. This perspective has been central to Indigenous knowledge systems for millennia. In Western history, early conceptual foundations for understanding the human body in relation to natural processes can be traced to scholars such as Hippocrates, Leonardo da Vinci, Nicolaus Steno, and Alexander von Humboldt. However, it was not until the 1980s that the analytical tools required to mechanistically connect human health and nature began to emerge. GeoBioMed builds on these perspectives and their historical development by leveraging decades of research on calcification processes associated with the survival of highly diverse Bacteria, Archaea, and Eucarya through geological time. This continues to play out in my lab’s studies of coral reefs, hot springs, the deep subsurface, meteor impact craters, aqueducts, and other natural and engineered environments.
What cancer problems are you seeking to address in your lab?
Our mechanistic GeoBioMed roadmaps are now guiding development of pharmaceutical and homeopathic interventions for diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of pathological calcification associated with renal, cardiac, and breast diseases. Small, X-ray dense calcifications are common in both healthy and diseased human breast tissue and easily detected on a mammogram, which doctors use to classify benign, probably benign and suspicious categories. However, most biopsies of regions deemed suspicious end up being benign, meaning those patients underwent painful and potentially harmful procedures unnecessarily. We are working to make mammogram interpretations significantly more precise and accurate for distinguishing between benign breast disease, ductal carcinoma in situ, and invasive breast cancer.
What keeps you going in your research? How do you recharge?
It is essential to be surrounded by family and friends, while keeping yourself interconnected with nature and actively engaged in environments of learning in which you are constantly challenged. This is what keeps me inspired, motivated, and, most importantly, thankful. Growing up in rural Iowa, I spent summers with my family in the National Parks, deepening my love for wilderness, rocks, and fossils, and for the mysteries of geological time. During my college summers, I surveyed National Forest boundaries in Colorado, where I was inspired by vast natural settings and the imperative to preserve them. My initial scientific research was on the evolution of modern and ancient coral reef ecosystems around the world, which rapidly evolved to include killing dinosaurs with an asteroid that hit the Yucatan, and the search for life throughout the cosmos through study of heat-loving microbes in Yellowstone. Upon arrival at Illinois, I had the opportunity to learn and integrate molecular microbiology with geology as a means to more comprehensively understand the co-evolution of Life and Earth. Our ongoing integration of diverse research efforts and field-based student teaching has continued to focus on hot springs and coral reefs, while expanding into the realms of the subsurface biosphere, Roman aqueducts, and human medicine.
What are fun or quirky facts about you that others may not know?
I live life with the perspective that every waking moment is an adventure, and that our most essential responsibility is to do as much good for others as is humanly possible. In addition, the secret to long distance driving is to check out the regional roadside geology along the way and pack plenty of Coke and Snickers.
Can you tell us a favorite film or book of yours?
My favorite books are Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean, and Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose. Regarding movies … Star Trek and Star Wars changed everything.
What accomplishment(s) are you most proud of, and why?
The chance to study how the Earth system works globally and the responsibility to now deliver these insights into the human body.
What is the best advice you’ve ever received, and how has it shaped your research career?
One of the most insightful perspectives on life was shared with me by Professor Carl R. Woese, who said (and I quote):
“You have to have your own sensitivity to the world and there has to be parts of it that are beautiful simply because they are beautiful to you, regardless of what anybody else ever thinks. You see this all the time in an artist and you see it also in good scientists.”
Learn more about Bruce’s research:
The New York Times: “Kidney Stones Are More Beautiful Than You Might Think”
Mayo Clinic Heritage Films: A World in a Grain of Sand: New Discoveries in Kidney Stones
NASA Art of Yellowstone Science, Fouke and Murphy (2016): Art of Yellowstone Science: Mammoth Hot Springs as a Window on the Universe (ebook PDF download)
Stay tuned for more weekly installments in our “Get to Know a Cancer Researcher” series.
Editor’s notes:
Bruce W. Fouke can be reached at fouke@illinois.edu.
This story was written by Jonathan King, CCIL Communications Coordinator.