Essay

“. . . We were seeking something on a grander scale that was directed to what we saw as the future for medical research. It did not take us long to reach the conclusion that human genetics was the area we should look at in some depth. Of course, the university had many things already going on in this area, including fundamental genetic studies in microorganisms, fruit flies, mice, etc.

"In addition, the genomic analysis of specific diseases was well under way; for example, the discovery of the involvement of the apoE gene in Alzheimer’s disease by Allen Roses, Peggy Pericak-Vance, and co-workers. We decided that what was needed was a major initiative in human genetics across the entire university. This would include not only clinical and basic sciences, but also research on policy and ethics. These latter topics would be fundamental for the future of the application of human genetics and would require the efforts of many areas of the university outside of the medical center.”

• Neighbors and friends: Medical center and university combine research efforts 
• Common grounds: Levine Sciences Research Center provides shared research facilities for clinical and basic sciences 
• Cross-campus unification of the biological sciences 
• Not-so-rare hybrid: more MD-PhDs as the Medical Scientists Training Program expands 
• Founding of the Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy