Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
The Broad Institute is the genomics powerhouse behind DepMap, cBioPortal co-development, and the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia.
DepMap (cancer dependency map), CCLE, PRISM drug screening, Cancer Program (Getz, Meyerson), CRISPR technology (Zhang).
- DepMap
- CCLE / PRISM
- Cancer genome analysis
Uses organoids and functional genomics to find what pancreatic cancers depend on beyond KRAS.
Bradley Bernstein mapped the chromatin landscapes that let cancer cells switch identities and resist drugs.
Pioneer of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing in human cells, the tool behind cancer dependency screens and edited cell therapies.
Francisca Vazquez leads DepMap, the public map of which genes each cancer cell line cannot live without.
Wrote the algorithms (MuTect, MutSig, ABSOLUTE) that most cancer genome studies use to find mutations.
Co-discovered EGFR mutations in lung cancer and linked Fusobacterium to colorectal cancer.
Showed that gene expression could classify cancers, then built the Broad into the engine of cancer genomics.
Cancers are defined as much by the tissue they come from as by the mutations they carry, which is why the same drug can work in one organ and fail in another with the same mutation. TCGA is the shared public dataset behind most modern biomarkers and target discovery.
DepMap is the lookup table drug hunters use to ask: which cancers would die if we blocked this gene, and how would we recognise them? It generated targets such as WRN and PRMT5-MTAP now in clinical trials, and it is public.
Many older people carry blood clones one or two steps from leukaemia, and those clones also drive heart disease through inflammation. CHIP is why blood-based cancer tests must filter out mutations from blood cells, and it opens a route to preventing both leukaemia and cardiovascular events in carriers.