7/25/2025 Liz Ahlberg Touchstone
Basic science is the fundamental research underlying all the science we see around us today. Yet too often this cornerstone of the modern world is neglected and forgotten. In this interview, bioengineering professor Rohit Bhargava expounds on the importance of basic science, the researching happening at Illinois today, and the threats it faces in the future.
Written by Liz Ahlberg Touchstone
CONTACT: Liz Ahlberg Touchstone, Biomedical Sciences Editor, 217-244-1073; eahlberg@illinois.edu
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The proposed fiscal year 2026 budget from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services includes a 40% reduction to the National Institutes of Health, among cuts to other scientific agencies. Basic scientific research is an essential foundation for advances in technology and medicine, particularly for cancer research, says Rohit Bhargava, the Phillip and Ann Sharp Director of the Cancer Center at Illinois and a Grainger Distinguished Chair of Engineering in the department of bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In an interview with News Bureau Biomedical Sciences Editor Liz Ahlberg Touchstone, Bhargava discusses what basic science is, how it contributes to cancer research and the leadership the U. of I. and the U.S. have in this area. Video by Andy Savage and Emily Polk.
In research, what is “basic” science?
Basic science is the exploration of ideas. It’s focused on discoveries, and that is the bedrock of all scientific progress and all technology. At some point, every technology was basic science. Your iPhone was physics at some point, and our understanding of physics leads us to make components, for example, transistors, that leads us to make circuits, that leads us to the iPhone. So basic science is really the bedrock of everything we do in society today.
Why does cancer innovation require basic scientific research?
Two reasons: One, it is important to explore the origins of cancer and understand how cancer develops. That’s a very “basic science” view of cancer. Two, we always keep an eye on how that basic science will be translated to human benefit. For example, we want to focus on understanding the mechanisms that drive cancer, and then take that insight and go to our chemists and say, “Can we build a molecule that prevents those mechanisms from occurring?” This bridge between basic science understanding and making use of it is something we can uniquely do on this campus, and that’s why the Cancer Center at Illinois is focusing on cancer research from the ground up.
The other important thing is that when we make technology from basic science, it’s not a one-step process. It’s often a multistep process, with optimization at every step. We think we can be more effective at making therapies and technologies that help people with cancer by focusing on basic science and taking it all the way to patient impact.
Over the last five decades, we have reduced the mortality associated with cancer. But it’s a disease that’s growing: growing in younger people, growing across all age groups, across genders, across ethnic and social backgrounds. It is a disease that affects everyone, and we’re all in this together.
How does a focus on basic research and technology make the Cancer Center at Illinois different from other major cancer centers at academic and research institutions?
We’re very different from other cancer centers in multiple ways. The first is our focus on basic science and engineering. One piece that was missing from the national cancer community was a cancer center that brought engineering to meet oncology. In engineering, you start from basic science. Then you have to take multiple steps to develop a technology, and at every step you have to make a design choice. By having the large engineering expertise we have on this campus focused on cancer, from the basic discovery up to the development of technologies and therapeutics, we can effectively make those design choices that lead us to better solutions.
Second, we are developing technology that was unimaginable just a few years ago. For example, our researchers are developing a technique that can detect biomarkers in blood very sensitively in just 30 minutes. Imagine going to a primary care physician’s office tomorrow, taking a small oral rinse, putting it into this machine, and 30 minutes later assessing your risk for developing oral cancer. In both the way we approach research and the technologies that we are engendering, we are unique in the nation.
What are some areas that the Cancer Center at Illinois is advancing?
The Cancer Center at Illinois is focused on two main areas. One is better detection and diagnosis of cancer, and the second is better therapeutics.
We look at the whole continuum of the presence and nature of cancer. We all know that early detection is the key to better cures, so there’s a segment of our researchers who are focused on early detection. Once there is a suspicion of cancer, we have to find it, so another group of our researchers is focused on imaging technologies that can locate cancer. Once we’ve located cancer, we want to understand its chemical makeup and how it might progress. A third group of researchers is focused on understanding the composition of cancer at the cellular scale and perhaps at the molecular scale, then using that information, along with artificial intelligence and computational models, to try and predict what will happen and perhaps what might be the best therapy for that individual patient.
One of our unique approaches to developing cancer treatments is to develop drugs with our expertise in chemistry and materials science, then translate them over to veterinary medicine to prove the concept in pet cats and dogs, because the same spontaneous tumors that occur in our cats and dogs also occur in humans. Then we can translate the same medicines to humans.
We’re also making engineered tumor models in the lab. We can take new drugs that we develop and test them in the lab with many copies of a single patient’s tumor. Then we can give the best advice and the best therapy for each individual patient. That’s our goal at the end of the day.
What are some of the challenges facing basic science research today?
In today’s funding climate, it is difficult to do basic research with a threat of a cut to support basic science. It’s very difficult. I understand why there’s a thought process behind cutting basic science: It’s difficult to extrapolate from a basic discovery to everyday benefits.
Whether we realize it or not, everything around us was once basic science. Every advancement, whether it’s the camera or the phone or our car, at some point arose from basic scientific exploration. The U.S. has been a leader in basic science for many decades. That has led to an amazing quality of life in the U.S., attracted great financial returns for the U.S. and attracted the world’s best and brightest to the country.
Basic science is not just something that helps make better technology. It helps make a better society. If we focus on basic science — particularly in those areas that actually help the health of society, like cancer — I think we’ll be better off in the coming years.
Rohit Bhargava is a professor in the Department of Bioengineering and holds a Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering. He also has affiliations with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Micro and Nanotechnology Lab, the Coordinated Science Lab, and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.