Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are leading the formation of a project to accelerate gene and cell therapy, with participation from several Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals, including Massachusetts General, Brigham and Women's, and more.
The project will be housed within a new, 30,000-square-foot center for advanced biological innovation and manufacturing, expected to open by the end of 2021. The still-unnamed center's board of directors will include representatives from Harvard and MIT, as well as their industry partners, GE Healthcare Life Sciences, Fujifilm and Alexandria Real Estate Equities.
Other members of the center will include the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and life sciences company MilliporeSigma, as well as the affiliated hospitals: Massachusetts General, Brigham and Women's, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Children's and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
"The center's overarching goal will be improving patient care," Richard McCullough, PhD, Harvard's vice provost for research, who helped lead the development of the project, said in a statement. "This would occur both by speeding access to the essential, modified cells that patients in clinical trials await, and by fostering discoveries through collaborations within the center's innovation space. The aim is that discoveries result in whole new treatments or improved application of existing treatments to provide relief to a wider universe of patients."