Research Centers

Carlos Slim Center for Health Research

Founded in 2010 by the Carlos Slim Foundation, the Carlos Slim Center for Health Research at the Broad Institute seeks to ensure that the genomic revolution in biomedicine benefits people throughout the Americas and the world.

The partnership brings together the Broad Institute, the Carlos Slim Health Institute, and other research institutions in Mexico, the United States, and several other countries with a shared commitment to transform human health. The center’s scientists are conducting groundbreaking research to uncover the biological mechanisms behind common diseases — such as type 2 diabetes and cancer — that impact populations in Mexico and Latin America. These insights will point the way to new and more effective therapeutics. The center also aims to accelerate the development of genomics research in Mexico by training scientists and enhancing research capacity.

 

The Gerstner Center for Cancer Diagnostics

The Gerstner Center for Cancer Diagnostics is developing blood-based biopsies for tracking disease progression and other cancer diagnostics that may potentially benefit millions of patients worldwide.

The Gerstner Center, established by Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., former CEO and chairman of the board of IBM Corporation and current chairman of the board of directors of the Broad Institute, will collaborate broadly, working closely with technology innovators, cancer biologists, computational scientists and clinicians. The Center will also pilot other promising new approaches to cancer diagnostics.

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Klarman Cell Observatory

Understanding how human cells function in health and disease and developing effective treatments requires a comprehensive picture of cellular components and circuits. Until recently, research on cell circuits was limited to single-cell organisms, which are significantly less complex than human cells. In 2012, the Klarman Family Foundation established the Klarman Cell Observatory as a pilot effort to decipher the inner workings of human cells and to foster new insights into the biological underpinnings of disease.

To propel our understanding of cell circuitry, the Observatory brings together scientists from a range of disciplines and works closely with other researchers at the Broad. It is also developing innovative experimental and computational methods to advance this emerging field. The Observatory also oversees close collaborations with scientists from Israel in order to help advance the country’s biomedical research, including an annual symposium, fellowships and other training opportunities, and joint projects.

 

Merkin Institute for Transformative Technologies in Healthcare

Technologies have a powerful ability to accelerate biological research across many different fields. Recent examples include such advances as DNA-encoded libraries; blood biopsies; diverse methods to precisely alter DNA and RNA sequences; and data platforms that aggregate large genomic information.

However, technology development is often hard to support through traditional grants. The Merkin Institute for Transformative Technologies in Healthcare, established by Dr. Richard Merkin, President and CEO of Heritage Provider Network, addresses this opportunity by funding novel, early-stage ideas aimed at advancing powerful technological approaches for improving how we understand and treat disease.

 

The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Genomic Mechanisms of Disease

The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Genomic Mechanisms of Disease facilitates close collaborations between the Broad Institute and Danish researchers investigating the genetics and gene regulation of common complex disease, including type 2 diabetes and obesity.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center generates systematic datasets that will help researchers around the world understand how human genetic variants affect risk for common complex diseases. All datasets are shared freely with the research community. A key activity of the Center is to launch and facilitate close collaborations between the Broad Institute and researchers at Danish universities, with initial focus on understanding type 2 diabetes and obesity, and mapping human gene regulation.

 

Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center

The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center brings together a global network of scientists from academia and industry to promote interdisciplinary research between the data and life sciences to transform biology and ultimately improve human health.

Two recent revolutions inspired the creation of the Schmidt Center: the exponential growth and widespread adaptation of data technologies like machine learning and cloud computing, and the dramatic advances in generating massive amounts of data about living systems through next-generation DNA sequencing, single cell genomics, and advanced medical imaging. Until now, these fields have largely developed in parallel. Their convergence creates a new era of biology, one that will yield a deep understanding of biological processes, with the ultimate aim of improving human health through more powerful disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.

 

Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research

Serious psychiatric disorders are the leading cause of disability worldwide. However, research on these devastating diseases has long been stalled because knowledge of their biological underpinnings remained elusive. Founded in 2007, the mission of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research is to decrease the burden of psychiatric illnesses by bringing the insights of modern genomics to bear on neurobiology and therapeutics.

The Stanley Center has extensive collaborations with investigators both within the Harvard, MIT, and Harvard-affiliated hospital communities and across the world. To date, Stanley Center researchers and their collaborators have assembled the world’s largest collection of DNA samples of psychiatric research. They are also working to uncover the genetic underpinnings of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, and ADHD, while at the same time, developing tools and methods to analyze research findings. By uncovering the biology of psychiatric disease, the Stanley Center hopes to find the way to new therapies.