Broad Institute

The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and

Broad Institute
Harvard (IPA: /broʊd/, pronunciation respelling:
BROHD),[1] often referred to as the Broad Institute, is
a biomedical and genomic research center located in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The institute
Established 2004
is independently governed and supported as a 501(c)
(3) nonprofit research organization under the name Research type Basic (non-clinical) and
Broad Institute Inc.,[2][3] and it partners with the translational research
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Field of Genomics, Bioinformatics,
University, and the five Harvard teaching hospitals. research Biomedicine
Director Todd Golub
Location 42°22′05″N 71°05′13″W
History
Affiliations Massachusetts Institute of
The Broad Institute evolved from a decade of research Technology
Harvard University
collaborations among MIT and Harvard scientists.[4]
One cornerstone was the Center for Genome Research Beth Israel Deaconess
of Whitehead Institute at MIT. Founded in 1982, the Medical Center
Whitehead became a major center for genomics and Boston Children's Hospital
the Human Genome Project. As early as 1995, Brigham and Women's
scientists at the Whitehead started pilot projects in Hospital
Dana–Farber Cancer
genomic medicine, forming an unofficial collaborative
Institute
network among young scientists interested in genomic
Massachusetts General
approaches to cancer and human genetics. Another
Hospital
cornerstone was the Institute of Chemistry and Cell
Biology established by Harvard Medical School in Website [Link] (htt
1998 to pursue chemical genetics as an academic p://[Link]/)
discipline.[5] Its screening facility was one of the first
high-throughput resources opened in an academic
setting. It facilitated small molecule screening
projects for more than 80 research groups worldwide.

To create a new organization that was open,

collaborative, cross-disciplinary and able to organize
projects at any scale, planning took place in 2002–
2003 among philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad,
MIT, the Whitehead Institute, Harvard and the
Harvard-affiliated hospitals (in particular, the Beth
Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge,
Massachusetts
Women's Hospital, Children's Hospital Boston, the Dana–Farber
Cancer Institute and the Massachusetts General Hospital).

The Broads made a founding gift of $100 million and the Broad
Institute was formally launched in May 2004. In November 2005,
the Broads announced an additional $100 million gift to the
institute.[6] On September 4, 2008, the Broads announced an
endowment of $400 million to make the Broad Institute a
permanent establishment.[7] In November 2013, they invested an
Broad Institute, 415 Main St.
additional $100 million to fund a second decade of research at the
institute.[8]

During the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the Broad Institute ran laboratory tests for the virus
for about 100 colleges and universities in the northeastern U.S.[9] As of September 2020, the Broad was
processing one out of every 20 COVID-19 tests in the nation.

Organizational structure
The Broad Institute has 11 core faculty[10] and 195 associate members from Harvard, MIT, and the
Harvard-affiliated hospitals.[11]

The Broad Institute is made up of three types of organizational units: core member laboratories, research
programs, and platforms. The institute's scientific research programs include:[12]

Cancer Program
Program in Medical and Population Genetics
Genome Biology and Cell Circuits Program
Chemical Biology Program
Metabolism Program
Infectious Disease Program
Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at Broad Institute
Genome Sequencing and Analysis Program
Epigenomics Program
Vertebrate Genomics Program
The Broad Institute's platforms are teams of professional scientists who focus on the discovery,
development, and optimization of the technological tools that Broad and other researchers use to conduct
research. The platforms include:[13]

Data Sciences Platform[14]

Genomics Platform
Imaging Platform
Metabolite Profiling Platform
Proteomics Platform
Genetic Perturbation Platform
Therapeutics Platform
Therapeutics Projects Group
The Broad Institute also supports the Data Visualization Initiative led by the Institute creative director
Bang Wong, which is aimed at developing data visualizations to explore and communicate research
findings.[15]

Core members
The faculty and staff of the Broad Institute include physicians, geneticists, and molecular, chemical, and
computational biologists. The faculty currently includes 17 Core Members,[16] whose labs are primarily
located within the Broad Institute, and 195 Associate Members, whose primary labs are located at one of
the universities or hospitals.[17]

The Core Members of the Broad Institute include:[18]

Paul Blainey is an expert in microfluidic systems to study single molecules and cells; one of
the main aims of his lab is to make single-cell analysis routine.
Todd Golub, a physician-researcher, is the director of the Broad Institute.[19] He applies
genomic tools to the classification and study of cancers.
Deborah Hung is a chemical biologist and an infectious disease physician who studies the
interactions between pathogens and their hosts, with the goal of discovering new antibiotic
targets.
Steven Hyman is the director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research.[20]
Eric Lander is the founding director of the Broad Institute. A geneticist, molecular biologist
and mathematician, Lander has been a driving force in the development of genomics and a
prominent leader of the Human Genome Project.
David R. Liu is a chemist and a chemical biologist, the Director of the Merkin Institute, the
inventor of DNA-templated synthesis, phage-assisted directed evolution and Cas9/CRISPR
base-editing.
Stuart Schreiber is director of the Chemical Biology program. He has developed systematic
ways to explore biology, especially disease biology, using small molecules toward the
development of therapeutic drugs.
Edward Scolnick is the former President of Merck Research Laboratories, former Director
and current Chief Scientist of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research.
Feng Zhang is a professor at MIT who developed optogenetics and genome editing
(CRISPR) technologies.
Erin Chen, is a biologist and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Hanna H. Gray Fellow.
Fei Chen is a researcher in biological engineering in the Department of Stem Cell and
Regenerative Biology
Sam Peng is a chemist who researches axonal transport in neurons and the molecular
dynamics of dynein motors.
Pardis Sabeti is computational geneticist leading a group focused using infectious disease
genomics and the study of human evolution to advance medicine and public health[21]
William Sellers is a biologist and director of the institute's Cancer Program.
Morgan Sheng is a co-director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at Broad
Institute.
Caroline Uhler is statistician working in the field of machine learning and applications in
genomics.
Xiao Wang is a Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Professor at MIT in the Department of
Chemistry.
 Ramnik Xavier is a director of the Klarman Cell Observatory.
Former Core Members include:

Myriam Heiman combines genetics, biochemistry, and cell biology to study the features that
define different types of neurons and their vulnerability to disease.
Aviv Regev is a computational biologist with interests in biological networks, gene regulation
and evolution.

Facilities
The Broad Institute's facilities at 320 Charles Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, house one of the
largest genome sequencing centers in the world. As WICGR (Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for
Genome Research), this facility was the largest contributor of sequence information to the Human
Genome Project.

In February 2006, The Broad Institute expanded to a new building at 415 Main Street, adjacent to the
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.[22] This seven-story 231,000-square-foot (21,500 m2)
building contains office, research laboratory, retail and museum space. It was designed by Architects
Elkus Manfredi with Lab Planner McLellan Copenhagen and was awarded high honors by R&D
Magazine.[23] In 2011, the institute announced plans to construct an additional tower adjacent to the 415
Main Street site at 75 Ames Street.[24] On May 21, 2014, the Broad officially inaugurated a 375,000-
square-foot research building at 75 Ames Street in Cambridge's Kendall Square.[25] The new facility has
15 floors, 11 of which are occupied, and has LEED gold certification. As of July 2014, it has around 800
occupants.

Funding
Between 2009 and 2012, the operating revenue of the institute was approximately $200 million, with
55% of that coming from federal grants.[26] The Broad Foundation (Eli and Edythe Broad) has provided
$700 million in funding to the Broad Institute as of February 2014.[27]

The Klarman Family Foundation provided a $32.5 million grant to Broad to study cellular processes in
2012.[28] In October 2013, Fundación Carlos Slim (the Carlos Slim Foundation) of Mexico announced a
$74 million grant to Broad Institute for the SIGMA2 consortium.[29]

In July 2014, coinciding with the publication of a new study on the genetics of schizophrenia,[30] the
Broad Institute received a $650 million gift from the Stanley Family Foundation, one of the largest
private gifts ever for scientific research.[31][32][33]

On October 10, 2017, it was reported that Deerfield Management Co. was giving $50 million to the
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard to support biology research.[34]
Dr. Richard Merkin has been donating since 2009 in support of research, founding the Merkin Institute
for Transformative Technologies in Healthcare. Dedicated on October 6, 2021, The Broad Institute's new
building at 415 Main Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts was named the Richard N. Merkin Building in
his honor.[35]

Honors
Since 2010, the Broad Institute has been listed on The Boston Globe's Top Places to Work. The 2014
report from Thomson Reuters' ScienceWatch entitled "The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds"
recognized that 12 out of the 17 "hottest" researchers in science belonged to genomics, and 4 out of the
top 5 were affiliated with the Broad Institute.[36] Additionally, Stacey B. Gabriel of the Broad Institute
topped this entire list. Twenty-eight researchers from Broad Institute have been recognized on ISI's
Highly Cited, a database that recognizes the top 250 researchers in multiple areas of science.[37]

Eric S. Lander, Stuart L. Schreiber, Aviv Regev and Edward M. Scolnick are members of the National
Academy of Sciences[38] and the Institute of Medicine. David Altshuler is a member of the Institute of
Medicine.[39] Feng Zhang received the 2014 Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science
Foundation, its highest honor that annually recognizes an outstanding researcher under the age of 35, for
contributions to both optogenetics and CRISPR technology.[40]

In biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology areas, the institute was ranked #1 in the "Mapping
Excellence" report, a survey that assessed high-impact publications.[41]

For its architecture, Broad's 415 Main Street building architects Elkus Manfredi Architects of Boston and
AHSC McLellan Copenhagen of San Francisco received high honors in the 2007 Laboratory of the Year
competition of the R&D Magazine.[42]

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Further reading
Kevin Ahern, Ph.D. (2009). "GEN Best of the Web". Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology
News. 29 (8): 66. Commentary on the Broad Institute's website, receiving a 4-star excellent
rating.

External links
Official website ([Link]

Retrieved from "[Link]