Blog

It has been a big year in the world of sequencing cancer genomes. And if you attended the recent Keystone Symposium in Boston, “The Changing Landscape of the Cancer Genome,” it’s only getting bigger – fast. The symposium focused on discoveries coming from large-scale cancer genomic efforts.

Many people know the Broad Institute as a leader in the study of human genetics. But did you know that as part of this work our researchers look into the genomes of other animals? The following video highlights the work Broad scientists are doing to unravel cancer genes found in the purebred Golden Retriever. The goal of the project is not only to find genes that cause cancer in these dogs but also to make a link with similar cancer-related genes in people. 

Rakesh Karmacharya spends one day each week treating severely ill psychotic patients as the medical director of the Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Research Clinic at McLean Hospital, a Harvard psychiatric hospital in Belmont, MA. The rest of his professional week is spent at the Broad Institute where he works as a physician-scientist in the Chemical Biology Program. For several years, Rakesh has been bringing these two worlds together in the form of a project to identify how clozapine, the main drug used for treatment of schizophrenia, exerts its therapeutic effects.

In the 1950s the world’s first coordinated malaria eradication campaign was launched. At the time, insecticides like DDT and the drug chloroquine were highly effective in nearly eliminating malaria from many countries where the disease was endemic – at least for a while. Unfortunately the Plasmodium falciparum parasite, which causes malaria through the bite of an infected mosquito, rapidly outwitted containment measures and again flourishes throughout many regions, including Asia, Africa and South America.