Work in the life sciences here in Boston and
Cambridge have touched the lives of
countless patients locally, nationally, and
internationally.
Billions of people -- men, women, and children
-- are alive today because of
life-saving, life altering, and life-sustaining
treatments that have
emerged from curiosity based research --
research that's been conducted here and throughout
the world.
Today we have treatments for countless
life-threatening illnesses.
With breathtaking advances in gene editing
and tissue engineering,
we're on the cusp of developing therapies
for intractable diseases,
and with collaborators from around the world,
we're working to combat
contagious diseases that know no borders.
The work that originated in these cluttered
labs -- labs probing the very
fundamentals of life have stimulated new therapies
that we now take for granted.
Therapies that keep us healthy, alive, and
well.
We work within a unique ecosystem --
one that includes collaborations across Harvard,
our affiliated teaching hospitals, our sister
institutions, and industry.
This is important work that's enabled by those
who support us --
government, philanthropists, and venture capitalists.
Our research community draws upon a wide range
of disciplines --
from basic and translational research to behavioral
science
to engineering and computing.
Over the last century science has made some
diseases curable,
other disease is treatable, some even forgotten.
What will life science give us in the next
100 years?
We have the capacity here to transform the
world
through everything that we do to help reimagine
how healthcare might be delivered, not just
in the United States,
but throughout the world.
I imagine a future where health is taken for
granted
and illness is the exception.
Where children are spared of hereditary diseases,
even before they're born,
and where no disease is ever a death sentence.
