Eric S. Lander received his B.A. in mathematics from Princeton University in 1978 and his Ph.D. in mathematics from Oxford in 1981, as a Rhodes Scholar. Heserved as assistant and associate professor of managerial economics at the Harvard Business School from 1981 to 1990.  In 1986, he joined the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and founded the Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research in 1990.  Lander became the founding director of the newly created Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT in 2003. He is also professor of biology at MIT and member of Whitehead.

His honors and awards include the MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship in 1987, the Baker Memorial Award for Undergraduate Teaching at MIT in 1992, the Woodrow Wilson Prize for Public Service from Princeton University in 1998, the City of Medicine Award in 2001, and the Gairdner Foundation International Award of Canada in 2002. He was elected a Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1997 and the U.S. Institute of Medicine in 1999.

Research Summary

Eric Lander and colleagues are using the knowledge of the human genome to tackle a fundamental issue of medicine: to find the molecular mechanisms underlying the basis of human disease.  Their work includes: understanding the functional elements encoded in the human and other genomes, through comparative analysis; understanding the genetic variation in the human population and its relationship to disease susceptibility; understanding the distinctive cellular signatures of diseases and of response to drugs; and understanding the mutations underlying cancer. His group also develops new analytical and laboratory techniques for genomics.  These have been applied to a broad range of common diseases, including cancer, diabetes, inflammatory diseases and many other genetic illnesses.

In creating the Broad Institute, Lander and colleagues have nucleated a community of researchers from the Cambridge-Boston area to tackle complex problems related to developing comprehensive tools for genomic medicine and applying them to the study of disease. This research effort requires cooperation across scientific disciplines from basic biology to chemistry, basic science to clinical science, and collaboration across institutions.

Selected References

Kellis M, Birren BW, and Lander ES. Proof and evolutionary analysis of ancient genome duplication in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Nature 428: 617‚624 (2004).

Mootha VK, Handschin C, Arlow D, Xie X, St Pierre J, Sihag S, Yang W, Altshuler D, Puigserver P, Patterson N, Willy PJ, Schulman IG, Heyman RA, Lander ES, Spiegelman BM.. Erra and Gabpa/b specify PGC-1a-dependent oxidative phosphorylation gene expression that is altered in diabetic muscle. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004 Apr 27;101(17):6570-5.

Kellis M, Patterson N, Endrizzi M, Birren B, and Lander, ES. Sequencing and comparison of yeast species to identify genes and regulatory elements. Nature 423: 241–254 (2003).

Mootha VK, Bunkenborg J, Olsen JV, Hjerrild M, Wisniewski JR, Stahl E, Bolouri MS, Ray HN, Sihag S, Kamal M, Patterson N, Lander ES, Mann M. Integrated analysis of protein composition, tissue diversity, and gene regulation in mouse mitochondria. Cell 115(5):629–640 (2003).

Mootha VK, Lepage P, Miller K, Bunkenborg J, Reich M, Hjerrild M, Delmonte T, Villeneuve A, Sladek R, Xu F, Mitchell GA, Morin C, Mann M, Hudson TJ, Robinson B, Rioux JD, Lander ES. Identification of a gene causing human cytochrome c oxidase deficiency by integrative genomics. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 100(2):605–610 (2003).

Ramaswamy S, Ross KN, Lander ES, Golub TR. A molecular signature of metastasis in primary solid tumors. Nat Genet 33(1):49–54 (2003).

Waterston RH, Lindblad-Toh K, Birney E, et al; Mouse Genome Sequencing Consortium. Initial sequencing and comparative analysis of the mouse genome. Nature 420(6915):520–562 (2002).

Gabriel SB, Schaffner SF, Nguyen H, Moore JM, Roy J, Blumenstiel B, Higgins J, DeFelice M, Lochner A, Faggart M, Liu-Cordero SN, Rotimi C, Adeyemo A, Cooper R, Ward R, Lander ES, Daly MJ, Altshuler D. The structure of haplotype blocks in the human genome. Science 296(5576):2225–2229 (2002).

International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium: E.S. Lander, et al. Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome. Nature 409: 860–921 (2001).