Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Congratulations to the recipients of the 2025 BroadIgnite Awards: Pierre Ankomah, Fabio Cunial, Jordan Doman, Ana Gonzalez Ramos, PhD, Sarah Elisabeth Pierce, Avanthi Raghavan, and Jackson Weir! BroadIgnite is an innovative program that connects philanthropists with early-career scientists to drive biology forward and revolutionize our understanding of disease. Learn more about the 2025 awardees, their projects, and the BroadIgnite program: https://lnkd.in/eZHJq2Dd #BroadInstitute

Polygenic scores work well in predicting risk of type 1 diabetes but are based on European-ancestry populations. Aaron Deutsch, Miriam Udler, MD, PhD, and colleagues used recent multi-ancestry genome-wide association studies to create a multi-ancestry polygenic score for this disorder. They trained the score using MGB Biobank data and tested it in All of Us data. They showed that their score performed similarly to existing scores in European populations and outperformed them in non-European populations. The team says their score could improve type 1 diabetes risk prediction in genetically diverse populations. 🔗: https://lnkd.in/eUP9_gxb #BroadInstitute #Science #ScienceNews #Research #ScientificResearch

LAST CALL! Nominations close Friday, December 5 for the 2026 Merkin Prize in Biomedical Technology. 🏆 Friday, December 5 is the last chance to submit nominations for this prestigious $400,000 award recognizing methods and devices that have improved human health through diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of disease. The 2025 Merkin Prize was awarded to the pioneering scientists behind CAR T-cell therapy. Take a look at the transformative impact the technology has had around the world: https://lnkd.in/eQJ5km6b Nominate a pathbreaking technology for the Merkin Prize today: http://merkinprize.org. Video credit: HPN Health #MerkinPrize #Biomedicine #BiomedicalTechnology #Science #ScienceAward #BiomedicalResearch #MedicalInnovation #HealthInnovation

AI models trained on pathology slide images have the potential to predict diagnosis, prognosis, and new biomarkers. However, efforts to apply such models clinically have been hindered by a lack of clinical data from disease-specific cohorts and rare conditions. To address this gap, Tong Ding and Faisal Mahmood joined Harvard Medical School colleagues Sophia Wagner, Andrew Song, Richard Chen, and Long Phi Le to develop TITAN, a new model trained on more than 330,000 slide images and corresponding pathology reports. TITAN consistently outperforms other models at many clinical tasks, and highlights the utility of taking a vision-language approach to model training. Read more in Nature Medicine. 🔗: https://lnkd.in/gG5q-8XM #BroadInstitute #Science #ScienceNews #Research #ScientificResearch

TP53-mutant cancers are associated with almost half of cancer deaths, but attempts to target the gene therapeutically have invariably failed or been off-target. One common feature of TP53-mutated cancers, especially those with missense mutations, is accumulation of mutant p53 protein in the cell. To target such cells with specificity, Ananthan Sadagopan, Stuart Schreiber, Matthew Meyerson, and Will Gibson developed a bifunctional molecule capable of binding the Y220C mutant of p53 while carrying a cell toxin, causing the toxin to amass just in mutated cells. Their study, published in Nature Chemical Biology, provides a generalizable framework for targeting TP53 missense mutations therapeutically. 🔗: https://lnkd.in/dkdJK9VA #BroadInstitute #Science #ScienceNews #Research #ScientificResearch

A new study led at Broad by Ezimamaka Ajufo, Patrick Ellinor, and Shaan Khurshid tries to answer the question of how exercise impacts people who are genetically at risk of cardiomyopathy but have no symptoms (dubbed “G+P- carriers”). Using genetic, fitness tracking, and cardiac MRI data from ~88,700 middle-age and older adult UK Biobank participants, the team found that the more moderate to vigorous exercise G+P- carriers got each week, the lower their likelihood of atrial fibrillation, heart failure, myocardial infarction, and stroke. More exercise was tied to lower risk of cardiomyopathy as well. Learn more in JAMA Cardiology. 🔗: https://lnkd.in/eB-Bvgnj #BroadInstitute #Science #ScienceNews #Research #ScientificResearch

A team of researchers at the Broad Institute, led by gene-editing pioneer David Liu, has developed a new genome-editing strategy that could potentially lead to a one-time treatment for multiple unrelated genetic diseases. Gene-editing medicines are often made one at a time to treat a specific mutation, which is challenging since there are thousands of rare diseases affecting patients around the world. A new technology has been designed to maximize the potential of gene editing by using just one editing agent to serve as many patients as possible. “We're excited by the possibility that you could develop a single editing agent into a drug that may help many different types of patients, circumventing the need to invest multiple years and millions of dollars to develop each new genetic medicine for each individual,” said Liu. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eRDmduN8

In 2019, a team led by Eachan Johnson and Deborah Hung unveiled PROSPECT, a chemical-genetic screening platform for identifying potential new antibiotics targeting Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTb). To help gain deeper insights from PROSPECT data, Austin Bond, Jim Gomez, Hung, and colleagues have developed a new computational method, Perturbagen CLass (PCL) analysis, that infers promising compounds’ mechanisms of action (MOAs) by comparing their PROSPECT profiles against those of 437 known compounds. Applying it to data from several compound libraries, they show in Nature Communications that PCL can effectively predict known and novel MOAs, support hit prioritization, and streamline the antimicrobial discovery process. https://lnkd.in/eKmTgH6g #BroadInstitute #Science #ScienceNews #Research #ScientificResearch

The Sentinel project, a system for detecting outbreaks in real time and preventing them from growing into potential pandemics, has won a 5-year grant from the MacArthur Foundation. “With this support, we can build a future where every community has the tools, knowledge, and power to detect and stop outbreaks before they spread,” said Broad Institute’s Pardis Sabeti. “It’s an opportunity to show what’s possible when science, innovation, and a sense of solidarity come together to protect humanity.” Read more: https://lnkd.in/e-jcimQJ

Breast cancer patient outcomes vary by age, with younger and older patients faring worse. To study how age affects the tumor microenvironment, Adrienne Parsons (BWH/DFCI), Peter van Galen, Sandra McAllister, and colleagues analyzed bulk and single-cell transcriptomic data from ER-positive and triple-negative breast cancers. They developed and used an Age-Specific Program ENrichment (ASPEN) analysis pipeline, and found several age-associated changes, including increased tumor cell epithelial-mesenchymal transition and cancer-associated fibroblast inflammatory responses in triple-negative breast cancer, and reduced vascular and immune cell metabolism with age in ER-positive breast cancer. The study suggests potential targets for age-specific therapeutics. https://lnkd.in/esmpNRFZ #BroadInstitute #Science #ScienceNews #Research #ScientificResearch