Collaboration is Key in the Struggle to Cure and Treat Cancer

Today, in a research era defined by the need to share ideas across disciplines and to share highly sophisticated equipment beyond the scope or budget of any single lab, the time has come to provide cancer researchers with a strikingly different new home. With the generous support of individual philanthropists, corporate donors and foundations, MIT is creating a new building designed from the ground up to support leading-edge cancer research. This new facility will house the Koch Institute and will be built along the south side of Main Street between Ames and Vassar Streets. At this site, just meters from the Whitehead Institute, the Broad Institute, and the rest of MIT's burgeoning biomedical research community, the Koch Institute (KI) will function as the center of cancer research at MIT, and beyond.

Development of the Koch Institute has created an opportunity to add a cadre of superb engineers to the cancer biologists at MIT. The life scientists can define the problems that need to be solved and tell how, in biological terms, to approach solutions. The engineers can put their analytical and problem-solving skills to work while relying on their colleagues' knowledge of cancer biology. Ongoing cancer research ventures have already initiated this collaboration, combining complex biological issues with tough technical questions that call for the best efforts of top-flight engineers. In a few years, these and other studies now underway are likely to be saving lives. But that is only possible because engineers and scientists have combined forces. When such teams are largely in one place as envisioned in the Koch Institute those interactions will be as easy as a short walk down the hall.

Fact Sheet

Project Team

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