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Photo via Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Todd Golub

Professor

Broad Institute

POSITION

Professor

COMPANY

Broad Institute

COUNTRY

USA

SCENE

Health

SOCIAL

Twitter

What makes Todd Golub a Global Shaker?

Todd Golub is a founding core member of the Broad Institute and serves as the institute’s chief scientific officer and director of its Cancer Program. He is also the director of the Gerstner Center for Cancer Diagnostics at the Broad Institute.

Golub is a world leader in understanding the basis of cancer by creating and applying tools of genomics. He has made fundamental discoveries in the molecular basis of childhood leukaemia and laid the foundation for the diagnosis and classification of human cancers using gene expression analysis.

He also pioneered the development of chemical screening approaches based on gene expression.

A 2020 study led by Golub has found nearly 50 approved drug compounds have previously unrecognized cancer-fighting capabilities.

Golub and his team of researchers say that existing drugs with newly identified anticancer activity could represent the starting point for drug development, when new targets are discovered.

“We thought we’d be lucky if we found even a single compound with anticancer properties, but we were surprised to find so many,” said Golub.

Golub joined the faculty of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in 1997. At the same time, he served as the leader of cancer genomics at the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research, which evolved into the Cancer Program at the Broad Institute, which he has directed since 2004.

He is currently the Charles A. Dana Investigator in Human Cancer Genetics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and professor of paediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

Golub has served on the scientific advisory boards of numerous organizations including serving as chair of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the Board of Scientific Advisors of the National Cancer Institute.

Golub received his B.A. from Carleton College and his M.D. from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. He completed his internship, residency, and fellowship training at Children’s Hospital Boston and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

In 2019, Golub founded Sherlock Biosciences a startup aiming to disrupt diagnostics. Sherlock is using Engineering Biology tools, including CRISPR and Synthetic Biology, to create a new generation of molecular diagnostics that can rapidly deliver accurate and inexpensive results for a vast range of needs in virtually any setting.

Tags: cancer, cancer detection, genetics, genomics

Last updated: February 5, 2020