The MIT Center for Synthetic Biology has been awarded a P50 grant from the National Institutes of Health for $3.6 million for 5 years. Led by Profs. Ron Weiss and Chris Voigt, this grant will focus on integrating synthetic biology with what the center calls “Grand Challenge” problems in medicine, among which include cell-specific cancer targeting, programming cells for drug delivery, and controlling homeostasis in beta cells.

With P50 funding, the Center for Synthetic Biology will continue to lead the field. To date, the center has spent a great deal of its focus on developing and characterizing computational and experimental toolsets for programming cellular networks. One of its new goals is to close the gap between theory and practice.  Now, the center enters a new stage in its evolution towards applying these technologies to understanding and treating disease.

Weiss and Voigt’s center is the first of its kind to be recognized by the NIH as a viable integrative approach to studying human disease using synthetic biology. A joint effort by the BE synthetic biology faculty, the development of the grant was a collaborative endeavor that took over two years to produce. According to the NIH, the P50 Specialized Center Grant supports “any part of the full range of research and development from very basic to clinical… The spectrum of activities comprise[s] a multidisciplinary attack on a specific disease entity or biomedical problem area.” On the motivation to pursue the P50, Voigt explains, “the grant seeds interdisciplinary students… The P50 format is more flexible for interfacial research.”

The grant will also continue to support the SynBio community itself at MIT, which holds regular seminars, socials, as well as a yearly symposium. Weiss revealed that the sense of community and the diversity of students’ backgrounds make the MIT Center for Synthetic Biology remarkable. Voigt agrees, adding that “the program at MIT is unique in scale.” The Center hopes to continue to attract students who are interested in working at this interface of science and engineering; Voigt believes that the P50 is a step in the right direction.

More information about the Synthetic Biology Center at MIT can be found at: http://synbio.mit.edu