The independent research institute will drive biomedical innovation

September 4, 2008

The Broad Institute just got a donation of $400 million from Eli and Edyth Broad. The donation is the formal start of an endowment, making the Broad Institute a permanent, standalone biomedical institution.

I have bemoaned the death of such bastions of innovation like Bell Labs in the past. But there is a trend in the biomedical sciences that is encouraging. Non-profit institutes and research centers like the Broad, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Janelia Farms, The Institute for Systems Biology, etc, with funding from powerhouse funders like the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are leading a trend towards independent research centers. Given the requirements for focussed cross-disciplinary research, I have a strong feeling that many of the innovations of the next quarter century are going to come from such institutions, funded by non-profits, private enterprises, and non-profit arms of companies like Google.

There will always be place for such federally funded institutes, especially those that fit the model of the ones described above, e.g. the Joint Bioenergy Institute. I wonder, in this changing environment, what the role of the traditional research university will be? In the life sciences, I see a continuum of research and collaboration, between universities, well-funding research institutes, and private enterprise. If we can harness the best of all three arms of research, I think we will be successful at innovation and not get in the kinds of rut we often do today, with too much overlap, little focus, and attempts at trying to leverage a somewhat broken federal funding system.

Is this a growing trend? Are we at risk of diluting the research pool by having too many institutes? We’ll just have to wait and see, but I am quite optimistic

Posted by Deepak Singh | Filed Under Innovation, Life Science

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September 5, 2008 at 3:02 am Pawel Szczesny

I think we could face the issue of too many research units if there would be no change in the way science is communicated. Typical "research" page of scientific institutes tells me nothing about what they actually are doing.
September 5, 2008 at 3:11 am Sutee Dee

I've seen innovative things come out of all of the types of organizations you mention. I think it's great that there more choices now, not just straight academia vs industry. People will be able to discover what kind of context clicks for them and hopefully will be happier and more productive as a result.
September 5, 2008 at 4:03 am Neil Saunders

If I had the choice, I'd work in a snazzy, well-funded institute over a uni any day. As you say in the post, it's up to unis to figure out how best to collaborate off-campus; otherwise, their research future is bleak.
September 5, 2008 at 4:21 am Cameron Neylon

I think there are also risks here of concentrating more of the available money in fewer places in the hands of fewer people. The big institutes tend to lead to centralisation and attract people who get money out of the government systems as well (at least in the UK). Not saying it's all bad but we also need mechanisms for many small amounts of money to be widely distributed IMO
September 5, 2008 at 9:28 am Andrew Su

Ditto Cameron...
September 5, 2008 at 10:43 am Deepak

Completely agree. We need that continuum and diversity. The difference is that you aren't necessarily (not all institutes work that way) worrying about your next grant. In the end it's all about execution. Research institutes aren't ideal for all kinds of projects, but for certain kinds I think they are by far the best way to get brains together and get them focussed.
September 5, 2008 at 11:20 am Deepak

Of course, there is another aspect, the virtual institute, which adds another layer of possibilities
September 5, 2008 at 11:50 am Chris Cotsapas

As an insider (I spend about half my time at the Broad) I have to say the living is easy. In the sense that, unlike my previous gig at an allegedly research-intensive dept in a decent uni, people are not only interested in research, but in the types of experiments you can't get funded traditionally. The Broadacious view is that if it isn't impossible, it's not that interesting.
September 5, 2008 at 11:52 am Chris Cotsapas

The basic mechanism is: take clever people from many areas, give them effectively unlimited resources (core facilities, easy access to funds etc) and a mandate to transform biology, and sit back and watch the fireworks.
September 5, 2008 at 12:12 pm Bill Hooker

ditto Pawel: if the way science is done doesn't change, everything else we try to do is a band-aid on a sucking chest wound.
September 5, 2008 at 12:35 pm Deepak

Chris echoed my Utopian view. It's not centralization per se. It's a case of, what happens when you put a bunch of smart people in the same building. That said, I have seen institutes that are just universities without the teaching requirements
September 5, 2008 at 12:48 pm Chris Cotsapas

Agree with Deepak. But the whole point of the Broad is to avoid precisely that. So far, with some success. At the announcement, Eric Lander pointed out that so far we've averaged a paper every three days over four years. So something must be working :-)
September 5, 2008 at 1:21 pm Mr. Gunn

It's a hard balance, because someone does need to be there to do the actual construction once the groundbreaking work is finished. Universities are a pretty good place for this, then it's back to private enterprise to actually make something commercial out of the work.

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Richard Gayle 2 months ago 1 point
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Your posts are not only really informative but they so often resonate with my own views. I've been doing biological research for 30 years, spent 16 years at a Large biotech (Immunex) and 4 years at a small startup. I think independent research institutions are where a lot of the projects that require the synthesis (based on the original definition of bringing things together; mashups) of data, not its analysis (i.e. tearing things apart), as most research universities are best at.

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mndoci 2 months ago 1 point
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Richard

Never realized you were in Seattle. I definitely like the research institute idea, as long as the innovation stays. Too many research institutes are slave to the same funding and grant writing malaise and university research, which prevents them from seeking high risk, bleeding edge projects

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The independent research institute will drive biomedical innovation

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