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I connected with Golub for a Zoom interview from his home in Newton. It was his first interview since his appointment to the post. Our conversation has been edited for length.
How did you learn that Eric Lander was appointed scientific adviser to the White House?
It all happened pretty quickly, because things work in government. I think it’s really great for the country, and Eric is really the person to do it. He has such a vision and such an ability to get things done.
Was it inevitable that you would replace him?
It was a discussion the board needed to have first. But yes, as a co-founder of Broad, being there since its inception, as scientific director and member of the management team, it was not shocking when I was appointed to this position.
What is changing in the research agenda and the work you foresee in the post-Lander era?
It’s worth taking a step back and taking a step back on where we’ve come from, because I think it tells us where we’re going. The early days of Broad were deeply rooted in genomics – the technical aspects of creating maps of the human genome – because that was the work that was really needed to lay the groundwork for the field.
Over the past 16 years, there has been a tendency to deepen biology and deepen our links with medicine and hospitals. We will be doubling down in these directions – deepening our ties with our local hospitals, deepening our commitment to work on therapeutics, bringing new approaches from biology and chemistry to drug discovery, and deepening our links with industry to this. respect. Much of the work to be done will be at the intersection of academia and the private sector, where we are tackling some really important issues together.
How were you involved in the COVID-19 testing at The Broad?
I see the COVID test as a great example of the Broad’s philosophy that it should tackle the biggest challenges we face, and it should be organized and have a culture that allows it to be agile, so it should can meet those with significant challenges. Years ago the biggest challenge was “Let’s find out how to sequence the human genome,” and when new sequencing technology becomes available on Monday, you must be able to respond on Tuesday. COVID is another example. Our culture and our organization have allowed us to adapt quickly. What was needed was very high throughput, available, ideally inexpensive genomic testing. We were perfectly prepared to be able to do so.
It looks like you are working from home. Do you have a regular schedule for entering the building?
Like many Broadies, I have a great time working from home. My current schedule arrives two days a week. I still spend a lot of time on Zoom, even though I’m in the building. But it’s good to be on Broad and see the institute come back to life. Our laboratories are now fully functional, everyone is back, the pace of work is back and the energy is back, even though many offices are still empty. People who are not at [lab] bench are largely at home, as it should be. We were deliberately conservative, but data-driven, when we returned to work. We started with groups using a work schedule to keep the density as low as possible, and gradually increased it. Having observed no cases of virus transmission in the Broad, we are confident that our security procedures are adequate. If you don’t need to be on the bench, our approach for now is that you should still be home.
Are there regular tests for asymptomatic employees?
Yes, for people coming on site, we have a regular testing program.
There is so much you do, whether it’s new data platforms, polygenic scores for heart attack risk, cancer works. What are the non-COVID things you would like to highlight in the “coming soon” category?
One is the field of therapeutics and drug discovery. More and more, we are seeing companies, large and small, coming off with interest [in] how could we work together to reinvent a future around how drug discovery and development works.
The Broad will never become a pharmaceutical company – that is not our aspiration. But I hope that Broad can become a growing force in drug discovery and development, in partnership with industry.
The second area is data and data analytics – in particular machine learning. The biomedical world is exploding with data, and having all the data scattered around haphazardly makes it not particularly usable. The concept behind Terra [a Broad-Microsoft-Verily collaboration] is that having a mechanism to bring together useful data and useful tools reduces the barriers for researchers in the community – not just on Broad, but all over the world – to be able to analyze this data and be confident in ” have data security and permissions in place.
And if we have this growing body of data organized in such a way that it can be analyzed, then the power of emerging machine learning methods that are now exploding on the scene becomes really exciting and important, and has real potential.
This is an area in which you will see the Broad become even more active, bringing together the computer community, machine learners, and people from biology and medicine. I see huge potential in machine learning and artificial intelligence methods, but the way to achieve it is to bring this community of computer scientists closer to the community of biologists and clinicians, and together decide what issues we really need to resolve. .
You recently expanded your campus. Do you think the density and level of activity that we observed before the return of the pandemic? Are you worried about Kendall Square after the pandemic? It’s a ghost town right now.
The success of Broad and biotechnology in the region is absolutely linked to this density and energy. I am convinced it will come back after the pandemic. I think people recognize the value of this density and everything that comes with it.
At the same time, I think the Broad and other organizations are going to learn from this point and ask if we should be more open to thinking about additional and more flexible ways of working. I suspect that on Broad it won’t look exactly like it was before the pandemic. There is no doubt that Kendall Square will continue to be a hive of information flow, energy and connections after the pandemic. This will be essential for the future growth and viability of Kendall Square, and for the region, even if it does not look exactly like it was before the pandemic.
Before the pandemic, it probably would have been difficult to say that the Broad would have a group leader in Silicon Valley, Seattle or Tel Aviv. Everyone was supposed to be in the building. Looks like you’re saying part of that could be reassessed.
It’s too early to know what our solution will be, but we’re certainly revisiting some of these assumptions. [about where people live] so that we can be flexible. And yet I think a significant measure of Broad’s success has been a commitment to having bench-based people and IT people who aren’t in separate departments, but who have a space where the two are physically side by side. coast.
Can you have rigorous and free scientific debates on Zoom, like in a conference room?
You can do a decent job, but that doesn’t replace being in person.
Do you plan to speak and write about the role of science in society, as your predecessor often did? What is your message?
The work of the Broad Institute is not just about making discoveries within the walls of Broad; it’s about doing it as a horizontal connector across the local Boston community and beyond. I suspect you will hear more from me. At the moment, my plate is quite full and my priority is to lead the Broad.
Scott Kirsner can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on twitter @ScottKirsner.
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