Gerstner Family Foundation Awards $10M to Broad Institute for Cancer Research

The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has announced a $10 million gift from the Gerstner Family Foundation to expand cancer research efforts focused on overcoming drug resistance in tumor cells.

The grant will support a two-pronged approach to addressing cancer drug resistance: Broad Institute researchers will use genome-editing technology to identify the mechanisms that drive cancer drug resistance in tumor cells and, at the same time, will work with researchers at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer to launch the largest study ever of pre-treatment and drug-resistant tumors. By comparing the genome sequence of pre-treatment tumors to resistant tumors, researchers hope to identify the mutations that cause resistance.