Nobody talks about gene therapy much any more, because our greater understanding of genetics hasn’t really produced any therapy.
This seems to be the theme of today Globe’s profile of the Broad Institute, the Kendall Square lab that keeps the promise of genomic research going. Broad – pronounced brode — absorbed the genetic components of the Whitehead Institute seven years ago.
Since its founding in 2003, the Broad has exploded into a major research hub, with a team of 1,500 scientists and staff, deep pockets, and the goal of leveraging mind-boggling amounts of information to understand and abolish some of humanity’s most complicated and seemingly intractable diseases: diabetes, cancer, schizophrenia.
But with big ambitions come big risks. The Broad’s founders have made what amounts to a bet, with hundreds of millions of dollars from government and private donors: that this kind of large-scale biology will be the key to realizing the human genome project’s promise to transform human health and medicine…
But even as discoveries raise the public’s hopes that new treatments are near, the research has so far illuminated not an easy path to curing disease, but immense complexity. In most cases, disease genes contribute in only a small way to the risk of illness, and some scientists have begun to question whether the big biology pursued at the Broad and elsewhere is drawing money from traditional research that might be more fruitful.