AAMC Reporter: November 2005

Displaced by the Storm, Researchers Struggle to Continue Their Work

By Whitney L.J. Howell

"Water. There's just water everywhere — approximately 10 feet of water in our buildings. No one could get near them for at least 10 days after the storm. This is huge."

That is how Bronya Keats, Ph.D., professor and chair of the department of genetics at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center (LSUHSC) in New Orleans, describes the devastation that Hurricane Katrina brought to research facilities at her institution.

When Katrina slammed into New Orleans, swamping much of the city and its two medical schools — LSUHSC and Tulane University School of Medicine — the loss of life and personal property seemed almost incalculable. But so was what happened to years of academic medical research: it was drowned, washed away, torn apart.

So far, it has been difficult to determine how much of the research has been lost. Keats estimates that 150 to 200 faculty researchers, post-docs, and medical students have been seriously affected, with most of them losing months, if not years, of work to the water, wind, and power outages.

After the storm, National Guard and Army officials accompanied the first three researchers who returned to the LSUHSC labs by boat — the only way they could get to the campus. Although the scientists were able to refill a few liquid nitrogen tanks that held cell lines and tissue samples, most tanks had run out of coolant or had been without power for days. In addition, all of the minus-80 degree freezers had thawed, leaving no usable research materials.

"Even now, we just don't know how bad everything is," Keats says. "And many people outside the area don't realize that we still don't have access to the campus. We don't know if our equipment will work when we return, but we're sure we've lost almost everything."

Gone, for example, are all the animals used for research at LSUHSC's experimental facility — including some 8,000 mice, rabbits, rats, guinea pigs, rhesus monkeys. Some of Keats' researchers were six months into breeding mice for studying a human genetic disorder, but Katrina destroyed the entire first generation. Once the scientists return to work, they hope to start again by creating a new generation. But they do not expect to recoup grant money already spent on the project.

So far, Keats says, officials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which supports a major part of research in academic medicine, have been flexible in discussing projects affected by Katrina. But she does not know how much of the financing can truly be salvaged.

"When it comes down to actual dollars, I don't know how we'll deal with what's been lost," Keats says. "Katrina will have a major impact on funding."

Faculty Has Been Scattered

Fruzsina K. Johnson, M.D., assistant professor of physiology at Tulane Health Sciences Center, and her husband and colleague, Robert A. Johnson, Ph.D., associate professor of physiology, examining protein images in a lab at Michael E. DeBakey VA Hospital in Houston

Despite the lost research, time, and supplies, perhaps the biggest challenge facing LSUHSC is that its faculty has been scattered throughout other academic institutions in the region. In Katrina's wake, many medical schools and academic medical centers immediately opened their doors to displaced investigators, and several researchers in Keats' genetics department have been working temporarily at Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Keats herself evacuated to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

Some of the more established researchers might be able to continue working and writing from their new locations, but Keats is worried about younger faculty and post-doc researchers, even though they were likely to have access to grant money for purchasing supplies.

"Everyone will be affected, but the junior faculty are really just getting started, and now they've suddenly got this disaster to deal with," Keats says. "They'll suffer a huge gap in the timeline of their work because they don't have any research to even write about like the older faculty do."

Now that Keats has obtained e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers for her faculty, staying in touch with them and keeping abreast of their needs has been much easier. The LSUHSC administration, which opened the campus this month, has also asked researchers to tally their losses and submit the information for review.

Tulane, like LSUHSC, suffered both damage to its medical school and research losses. Located a few blocks away from the Superdome, the medical school sustained little structural damage. But its lower floors were flooded with three to four feet of water, and the basements filled, says Gabriel Navar, Ph.D., chair of Tulane's department of physiology and co-director of the hypertension center.

Labs on higher floors were relatively unscathed. But equipment dependent upon electricity failed. All research specimens and samples held in deep freeze, refrigerators, and cold storage thawed during long power outages and were no longer viable for research. "We were without power for an extended period of time,"Navar says. "We've lost cultures and cells that have been involved in a number of experiments."

Still, some investigators in the department of animal research were able to save animals involved in their experiments. For example, many of the transgenic mice breeding colonies survived the storm and its aftermath, allowing researchers to continue working in their temporary locations.

So far, Navar says, the Tulane administration has been in close contact with the NIH, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Veterans Affairs to determine what type of assistance is available to researchers who moved to other medical schools in Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama. There was no early answer, but Navar, who has been working out of the University of Mississippi School of Medicine, says all grants for existing research projects remained secure. Although there is some concern that Tulane's researchers may choose not to return there, Navar says, leaders of host schools have an understanding that they will only provide resources for guest researchers and will not actively seek to acquire them permanently.

"There's a good agreement among all the leaders that no one will make an overture to recruit Tulane faculty," he says. "They want to do what they can to assist the faculty without poaching. But, of course, there's always a chance that we might lose some people."

While Tulane and LSUHSC sustained perhaps the most severe damage of any medical school in several years, they are not the only academic medical institutions to have faced hurricanes.

Protection Strategies

In 1992, Hurricane Andrew, like Katrina a Category 4 storm, ripped through Miami, felling trees and knocking out power at the University of Miami School of Medicine. Although researchers and students there were not displaced, the school implemented strategies to protect both the institution and its research efforts in future storms, says Richard Bookman, Ph.D., associate dean for research and graduate studies.

Now, at the beginning of every hurricane season, university and medical school administrators send out information to research labs, reminding them to back up all computerized information and keep inventories current. In addition, if a Category 2 storm or higher is predicted, the buildings will begin to shut down, and miles of heavy plastic sheeting will be used to cover valuable equipment to prevent water damage.

"The major challenge to preparing for hurricanes is getting people to pay attention beforehand and make the time to take precautionary measures," Bookman says. "There's no way to enforce these safeguards with every principal investigator, but these are intelligent people. You can provide them with the materials to protect their work, and you have to trust that they'll use it."

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