New Report: Convergence in Boston: How multidisciplinary R&D is driving bench-to-bedside breakthroughs

The area in and around Boston, Massachusetts is as dense with world-renowned scientific experts as anywhere on earth. Here, in an area a little larger than one square mile, researchers from Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a multitude of biotechs and Big Pharmas are driving the evolution of the technology and business of science. In doing so, research teams are increasingly looking to share data, research, and ideas.

Collaboration has always been key to science, but, as researchers have taken on ever-more complex projects, the need to work with people from different disciplines, backgrounds, and organizations has increased. Such collaborations run counter to the secretive, ego-driven, or financially-motivated sides of science, but have nonetheless taken root, even in for-profit fields, as organizations have realized the value of expanding the breadth of their internal expertise while looking outside of their walls for collaborators. We at Biotech Week Boston are excited by the possibilities that this new era of collaboration can bring to biotech. We’ve asked writer Nick Paul Taylor (Nature, Fierce Biotech, Regulatory Focus) to report on several innovators who are contributing to this convergence of disciplines and ideas here in Boston.

In this report, Nick looks at three people: "who have embraced the collaborative, multidisciplinary ethos and, in doing so, have influenced science, business, and the lives of patients to a far-greater degree than would have been possible through an isolationist approach. Their goals are diverse. One is working to improve drug availability in low and middle-income countries through the advance of biomanufacturing. Another is looking to nature for answers to biomedical problems that blight the lives of patients. Our third is coordinating a global campaign to unlock the secrets of the genome."

Nick continues: "What links the three researchers is not the type of science they do, but the way they do it. Each is an example of what scientists, particularly in hotspots such as Boston, can achieve when they are open to the sharing of data, research, and ideas."

We hope you enjoy Nick’s in-depth report. We are proud to say that all three innovators featured in this report will be speaking at Biotech Week Boston this October 2016. You can catch up with Jeffrey Karp’s newest discoveries and research at Biotech Week Boston's Cell and Gene Therapy Bioprocessing and Commercialization event. Jeffrey's talk is entitled "MSCs on steroids". Stacy Springs will be on a panel entitled "Industry-Academia Collaboration in Translational Research and Biomanufacturing of Next Generation Biologics at the Bioprocess International Conference and Exhibition. And Kristin Ardlie will discuss discuss GTEx Data and Analysis at Biorepositories and Sample Management.

We invite you to download “Convergence in Boston: How multidisciplinary R&D is driving bench-to-bedside breakthroughs.” The report is free and no email address or registration is required - so go ahead and share the link!

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Karp Lab: Biomedical Engineering and the Third Revolution in Biotech

In the past decade, several scholars, led by luminaries such as Nobel Prize winner Phillip Sharp, have been talking about how the Cambridge/Boston biotech area has been at the epicenter of a third revolution in biotech. The first revolution we can trace to the beginnings of molecular and cellular biology. The second was a genomics revolution (much of it happening in Cambridge/Boston) with Sharp’s discovery of RNA splicing in 1977 and his founding of Biogen in 1978. Now Sharp and others see a third biotech revolution in a movement which is bringing together disciplines once seemed separate - such as engineering, computer science and the life sciences.

This year MIT put out a report called “Convergence: The Future of Health” which states: “Convergence comes as a result of the sharing of methods and ideas by chemists, physicists, computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and life scientists across multiple fields and industries. It is the integration of insights and approaches from historically distinct scientific and technological disciplines. Convergence is a broad effort across the sciences that will play a crucial role in many fields of endeavor. As noted above it needs to be applied to help solve many of the world’s grand challenges.”

We at Biotech Week Boston are excited by the possibilities that this new era of convergence can bring to biotech. We’ve asked writer Nick Paul Taylor (Nature, Fierce Biotech, Regulatory Focus) to report on several innovators who are contributing to this convergence of disciplines and ideas here in Boston. Nick begins his analysis of this exciting multidisciplinary movement in Boston with Jeff Karp, founder of Karp Lab. Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital, principal faculty at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Affiliate Faculty at MIT and the Broad Institute and board of advisors at TEDMED - MIT's Technology Review listed him as one of the top innovators in the world under the age of 35 in 2014.

We’re proud to feature world renowned innovator Professor Karp in our report “Convergence in Boston: How multidisciplinary R&D is driving bench-to-bedside breakthroughs”. Karp Labs is “innovating at the intersection of medicine and science” with a firm belief that “innovation occurs at the interface of disciplines” and a focus on translational research. Click to download and read about Karp Labs’ contribution to this convergence phenomenon (no email address or registration is required).

We hope you enjoy Nick’s in-depth report. You can catch up with Jeffrey Karp’s newest discoveries and research at Biotech Week Boston's Cell and Gene Therapy Bioprocessing and Commercialization event this October. Jeffrey's talk is entitled "MSCs on steroids".

What exactly is #BiotechWeekBoston?

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