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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How the Broad Institute’s GTEx uses a multidisciplinary approach to translate research into medicine

MIT’s new report “Convergence: The Future of Health” 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’ve asked writer Nick Paul Taylor (Nature, Fierce Biotech) to research several innovators who are contributing to a multidisciplinary convergence right here in Boston. The paper is entitled: "Convergence in Boston: How Multidisciplinary R&D is driving bench to bedside breakthroughs".

Nick reports on what the Broad Institute, specifically in their Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project, is contributing to understanding disease in their work with genomics. Genomics has, since its earliest days, been a multidisciplinary field. The sequencing, analyzing, and contextualizing of genomes necessitates the input of experts from a broad range of backgrounds. Nick spoke with Kristin Ardlie, Ph.D., the Senior Research Scientist, Director of GTEx at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. The GTEx project started in 2010 “with the goal of creating a comprehensive atlas and open database of gene expression and gene regulation across human tissues.” Nick explores Kristin Ardlie and the Broad Institute’s work to discover how and why the field of genomics needs to draw on a diversity of skills and disciplines to handle the myriad of tasks involved in understanding inherited susceptibility to disease.

We hope you enjoy Nick’s in-depth report. You can catch up with Kristin Ardlie and The Broad Institute’s Genotype-Tissue Expression projects newest research at Biotech Week Boston's Biorepositories and Sample Management event this October. Kristin will discuss GTEx Data and Analysis.

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Broad Institute's GTEx program ending, says Director

The GTEx Project has announced that “GTEx, in its current form, is nearing the end.” The GTEx Project was launched in 2010 to create a data resource and tissue bank for scientists to study how genomic variants may affect gene activity and disease susceptibility. GTEx was set up in response to a boom in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and subsequent sharp increase in knowledge of the links between genetic variants and human diseases. On one level, knowledge of these variants marked a major advance in our understanding of the root causes of disease and, by extension, our ability to treat or prevent them. However, with most of the GWAS variants not coding for proteins, the molecular mechanisms through which they lead to the development of diseases were poorly understood. This is where GTEx came in.

GTEx program may transition, in some form, into an international project 

Nick Paul Taylor recently interviewed Kristin Ardlie, director, biological samples platform at The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard where she made this exclusive announcement. Ardlie gave some indication of what might happen to the program. “There are several groups that would like to continue and expand the project and the sampling,” Ardlie said. “Our particular project won't be continuing, but there's a lot of interest in pushing a continued project forward, maybe internationally. We've had one meeting already.” announced Ardlie.

For the full interview with Ardlie download the complete report by journalist Nick Paul Taylor here: “Convergence in Boston: How multidisciplinary R&D is driving bench-to-bedside breakthroughs”. No email or registration is required.

We hope you enjoy Nick’s in-depth report. You can catch up with Kristin Ardlie and The Broad Institute’s Genotype-Tissue Expression projects newest research at Biotech Week Boston's Biorepositories and Sample Management event this October. Kristin’s will discuss GTEx Data and Analysis.

What exactly is #BiotechWeekBoston?

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