NEWS

Large-Scale Science: Boston Area Institutions Given $100 Million for Genomics Institute

Vicki Brower

Catalyzed by a donation of $100 million from philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, all in Cambridge, Mass., are banding to together to form a new interdisciplinary genomics institute for clinical medicine. The mandate of the new alliance, which the three institutions announced in mid-June, is to accelerate the search for cures to diseases by building on the fruits of the Human Genome Project, according to Eric Lander, Ph.D., founder, director, and faculty member of the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research and director of the newly formed Broad Institute.



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Dr. Eric Lander

 
The institute will focus on the molecular basis of cancer, inflammatory and infectious diseases, and metabolic disorders through the pooling of resources of institutions that have traditionally competed with each other for brainpower and financial resources. Although details of the institute are still being worked out, there will be a major effort in cancer research, said Todd R. Golub, M.D., one of four core Broad faculty, founding director of cancer genomics at the Whitehead Institute, and associate professor of pediatrics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s Hospital, Boston.



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Dr. Todd Golub

 
A Decade of Research

The founding gift from Eli and Edythe Broad (rhymes with "road"), $100 million, will be spent over the next 10 years, together with another $200 million in non-governmental funds that Harvard and MIT are committed to raise. The plan is for the entire amount to be spent over the next decade and for the institute not to carry an endowment. The Broads, who live in Los Angeles, chose the Boston area for the institute because "there’s no place that has the combined scientific quality and leadership than here in Cambridge," Eli Broad said at the press conference announcing plans for the institute. They had initially planned to found the institute in California.

Lander, who led the public consortium that worked to decode the human genome, noted that, although the Human Genome Project "sparked a historic transformation in biology, the scientific community now has an opportunity to transform medicine." In his remarks in June, Harvard president Lawrence Summers, Ph.D., said that the Broad Institute "will operate at a scale necessary to deal with literally billions of pieces of data, while at the same time maintaining the flexibility to rapidly go down the most promising research pathways as they are opened up."

"All research is destined to remain entirely within the public domain," Golub emphasized. The institute’s goal is to add to existing research efforts by acting as a catalyst and nucleus for larger collaborative projects that cannot be accomplished in individual academic laboratories, due to need for scale, scientific or organizational infrastructure, or multidisciplinary expertise, said Golub. They plan to include individual research laboratories and larger, team-based programs to produce and use genomic tools. It will be interactive with industry, as well. In short, its goal is to train the next generation of scientists, Golub added.

In addition to Lander and Golub, other members of the founding faculty include David Altshuler, Ph.D., assistant professor of genetics and genetic medicine at the Harvard Medical School, Boston, who has focused on characterizing single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, and defining causal relationships between sequence variants and human disease in type 2 diabetes and reproductive cancer; and Stuart L. Schreiber, Ph.D., chair of Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, an organic chemist who focuses on cell biology and immunology. In all, the institute plans to hire 12 core members and about 30 associate faculty members (about 15 of these before the institute’s launch later in the year). Core faculty will be appointed on a long-term basis and will lead major institute programs, and associate faculty will be given rotating appointments, according to a statement from Harvard.

Doing Big Science

The institute was founded "as a response to the challenge, ‘what is the right organizational model for doing science in the 21st century?’" Golub observed. Interestingly, a new report from the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council of the National Academies released on the same day the Broad Institute was announced, advocated more large-scale biomedical collaborations involving multiple institutions and disciplines (see News, Vol. 95, No. 15, p. 1107). Such "big science" collaborations include the Human Genome Project, the International HapMap Project, and the Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Consortium, yet modes of funding and organizing such collaborations have been elusive, the report noted.



             
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