Illuminating human disease
Genomics is laying the groundwork for a new generation of diagnostics and therapeutics, built on our growing understanding of the biological mechanisms of disease. At the Broad Institute, biologists, chemists, physicians, mathematicians, computational biologists, and software engineers are using systematic, unbiased approaches to identify the root causes of disease and find new opportunities for therapeutic intervention. Learn more about #HowWeScience.
Food allergies
Understanding why the body sometimes overreacts to certain types of food
Food allergies are common, but relatively little is known about what causes them. Scientists at the Broad Institute and Yale School of Medicine and other collaborators in the Food Allergy Science Initiative are working to understand the roots of food allergy and other immune disorders, with the goal of improving prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Employing powerful technologies such as single-cell sequencing from the Broad’s Genomics Platform, chemical screens from the Chemical Biology and Therapeutics Science Program, and image analysis methods from the Imaging Platform, scientists are surveying cell types in the gut and how they interact with one another. Already, the work has revealed previously unknown interactions between the nervous and immune systems that could lead to treatments that target the underlying biology of food allergies, not just the symptoms.
