A scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has received a $500,000 grant to apply advances in human genomics to the development of better diagnostic and therapeutic tools for cancer.
Todd Golub, director of the Cancer Program at the Broad, won the grant from the Freedom to Discover program of Bristol-Myers Squibb.
"We are thrilled that the Freedom to Discover program has chosen to recognize the outstanding leadership and achievements of Todd Golub," said Professor Eric Lander, director of the Broad Institute. "Todd is a true pioneer who is continually changing how we look at science and medicine through his genomic approaches to cancer biology."
"I'm very grateful to Bristol-Myers Squibb for its unrestricted support of our group's work," said Golub, who is also an investigator at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and an associate investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "The funds will allow us to pursue new ideas for which funding is often very difficult to obtain. This funding will help us reach our goals of making a real impact on cancer."
Among other things, the grant will help support the development of a molecular classification system for cancer. This could facilitate more accurate diagnosis and matching of patients with the most effective treatments.
The Broad Institute is known officially as The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute. It is a research collaboration of MIT, Harvard University and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. The Broad's mission is to fulfill the promise of genomics for medicine.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on February 25, 2004.
