Prof. Eric S Lander

With the successful completion of the Human Genome Project, the challenge now is to decipher the information encoded within the human genetic code - including genes, regulatory controls and cellular circuitry. Understanding these components, controls and circuits is fundamental to the study of physiology in both health and disease.

The Broad Institute brings together a community focused on the comprehensive understanding of genomes through genome comparison to reveal functional elements through evolutionary conservation, studies of regulatory control by proteins and chromatin structure, and characterization of cell circuitry through monitoring and modulation of cellular states.

The Institute is home to the research laboratories that were previously known as the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research (WICGR). Founded in 1990, the WICGR served as a flagship for the international collaborations to produce a draft sequence of the human and mouse genomes.

Today, Lander is using the knowledge of the human genome to tackle the fundamental issue of medicine: to find the causes versus the symptoms of disease. He believes this will take comprehensive attacks. It entails understanding all of the genes and the gene products and how they work in the cell, looking at the circuits in which they work, and understanding the genetic variation in the population. Doing so requires cooperation across scientific disciplines from basic biology to chemistry, and from basic science to clinical science, as well as collaboration across institutions.

Lander’s group recently launched a revolution in the study of human genetic variation, through its own research, and participation in larger projects devoted to the question. He has also led the efforts to develop many new analytical and laboratory techniques for studying complex genetic traits in human, animal and plant populations and for creating a molecular taxonomy of cancer. These techniques have been applied to a broad range of common diseases, including cancer, diabetes, inflammatory diseases and many other less common genetic illnesses.