The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard today opened a 375,000-square-foot research building at 75 Ames Street in Cambridge’s Kendall Square.
The new building, which connects to the institute’s 7 Cambridge Center location, consolidates the Broad’s campus and brings together researchers from a variety of scientific disciplines. Research groups in the new building will be focused on several disease areas, including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, metabolic diseases, autoimmune diseases, psychiatric diseases, and more.
“This building provides an extraordinary research community across Boston with a remarkable space for scientific collaboration and discovery,” said Eric Lander, Broad Institute Founding Director. “It also represents a deep commitment to Kendall Square and Cambridge, and the community that has nurtured us over the past decade.”
A flexible floor plan integrates lab and office space on every floor, allowing large multidisciplinary research teams, administrative teams, and small academic groups to work side-by-side, the institute said. The building, home to 800 members of the Broad community, accommodates the needs of Broad employees as well as faculty from throughout the Institute’s partners—MIT, Harvard University, and the Harvard-affiliated hospitals.
Among the new building’s occupants is the institute’s Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, which seeks to uncover the biological basis of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, autism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It has more than 45 full-time employees and approximately 100 collaborators at the Broad’s partner institutions.
“In the new building, we will have more space for multidisciplinary teams that include the world’s leading experts in psychiatric disease research, who are crucial to our pursuit of new therapeutic targets for these diseases,” said Steven Hyman, core member of the Broad Institute and director of the Stanley Center.