(L to R) GARY L. GOTTLEIB, Broad Institute Director ERIC S. LANDER, donor ELI BROAD, University President LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS, MIT President CHARLES M. VEST and Whitehead Institute Director SUSAN L. LINDQUIST announce a new genomics research center.

Published on June 19, 2003

Harvard, MIT and the Cambridge-based Whitehead Institute announced Thursday a sweeping new biomedical research center aimed at harnessing the recently-revealed code of the human genome for clinical ends.

A $100 million gift from California philanthropists Eli and Edythe L. Broad will bring together researchers across the two universities, in what founders described as an unprecedented collaboration. The new Broad Institute will grow out of Whitehead’s programs, under the leadership of Eric Lander, a faculty member at both MIT and Whitehead and a key player in the completed Human Genome Project (HGP).

MIT will administer the institute, but the three institutions will oversee it jointly. And MIT and Harvard have committed to raising as much as $200 million from individuals, foundations and corporations to support its research.

At a press conference Thursday, top officials from the universities and Whitehead said the new institute would bring a focus—and a new model of inquiry—to the first great scientific challenge of the 21st century.

With the full human genome sequenced, research at the Broad Institute will attempt to use the genetic data to better understand and treat the cellular mechanisms underlying disease, rather than just its symptoms, Lander explained.

“I have kids—I’m hoping by the time they grow up and need medical attention that...they will be able to have access to a medicine based on actual causes,” Lander said.

As was the case with the HGP, a key philosophy behind the institute’s work is to make the tools it develops widely available to scientists worldwide. “Our collective scientific judgement was that in a world such as ours...fundamental research and fundamental capabilities should be in the hands of all types of scientists,” Lander said.

Lander and others emphasized that the institute will be the first of its kind in terms of the scope of the collaborations it hopes to promote. Among its founding faculty are professors from MIT, Whitehead, Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and Harvard Medical School (HMS). It will bring together basic, applied and clinical scientists, with experts from fields including computational biology, chemistry and engineering.

HMS faculty at Harvard’s affiliated teaching hospitals—who, according to Lander, provided the push behind the University’s involvement in the institute—will be particularly important contributors, bringing with them crucial clinical data.

University President Lawrence H. Summers said that the strength of the Broad Institute will be its parent institutions. “I am convinced that there is no other city in the world with as many extraordinary scientists at every level...prepared to work on biomedical problems,” Summers said.

The Broad donation is not an endowment: it is earmarked to directly fund research over the next decade. It is also unusual in that Eli Broad—chair of financial service giant AIG SunAmerica and a noted philanthropist who helped fund the Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles—has no prior connection to MIT or Harvard.

The Broad Institute will be located near Whitehead and MIT in Cambridge’s Kendall Square neighborhood, an area seeded with biotechnology firms. The institute will have 15 associated faculty members when it is launched later this year. Lander will be appointed to the faculty of HMS at that time.

Little Things, Big Issues

The announcement of the institute—which came after the Harvard Corporation approved the University’s involvement at its meeting Commencement week—finally brings to fruition an initiative in the life sciences that Summers has promoted for a year without revealing details.

Summers has said that strengthening life science research at the University is one of his top priorities, and the institute embodies a number of goals he has promoted to that end.