history

The Biophysics Research Laboratory (BRL), predecessor of the Center for Biochemical and Biophysical Sciences and Medicine (CBBSM), was established in 1954 by the Rockefeller Foundation as a vehicle for bringing the emerging rapid advances in the biomedical sciences into a medical center context. Located in the basement of the old Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, its purpose was to provide an opportunity for both capable young physicians and Ph.D.’s, with an academic inclination, to expand the horizons of their research interests beyond the bounds of traditional basic science and its potential relevance to clinical investigation. As a result, it became a center for the training of a generation of promising young physicians (and especially of chief residents-to-be) in the biochemical and biophysical tools that would equip them for investigating diseases at the molecular level. Among its graduates are a number of leaders in medicine who have gone on to provide academic leadership at Harvard and institutions throughout the world. A substantial number of biochemists, biophysicists and spectroscopists augmented the group.

As the scientific accomplishments of the laboratory grew, especially in the fields of enzyme structure, protein chemistry, microspectroscopy, and instrument development, it began to attract young scientists from a diverse set of parent disciplines who saw an opportunity to apply their graduate training to the excitement of biomedical research. Post-doctoral fellows spent varying periods of time in the laboratory; they, too, have taken on responsible posts throughout the world and, in turn, made their contributions to science.

Shortly after its founding, the Director of the BRL, Bert L. Vallee, was appointed the Paul C. Cabot Professor of Biochemical Sciences in Biological Chemistry as well as in the Department of Medicine where he also served as Head of the Clinical Chemistry Division and Laboratories.

He was made aware of the School’s interest in having him initiate new educational programs for medical students (although students, from the beginning, had worked in his laboratory). As a result he instituted a number of innovations in the medical curriculum. First, Saturday morning clinics demonstrated the biochemical abnormalities underlying a number of disease states. Second, a tutorial for a small number of selected students that emphasized the scientific basis of medicine for a small number of selected students entering the clinic and seeing patients for the first time. The tutorial demonstrated the continuum between the theoretical foundations of medicine and its practice. Third, he organized a course, taught three times per year, that highlighted on the foundations of disease. Fourth, he designed the MD-PhD program for medical students interested in a research as well as a clinical education, writing the successful MSTP proposal and serving as the program’s first director. The new program was established despite considerable opposition from some faculty members who felt that it was not a necessary addition to the School’s activities.

The BRL was also the first of the School’s academic entities to establish ties to industry, seeing an opportunity for additional resources to support basic research and for help in the translation of such research to benefit the sick and suffering.

The Monsanto agreement, organized around the theme of angiogenesis as a window on biology for the Monsanto Company, was a landmark. Its consummation brought, in some quarters, dire predictions that it represented the slippery slope to academic perdition. Its execution demonstrated just the opposite, viz., that industry and the academy, under the proper circumstances, could be of enormous help to each other. The Harvard-Monsanto agreement included a construction element, which paid for siting of the Laboratory in the Seeley Mudd Building, where it was located for over 20 years. It also endowed three new professorships in perpetuity. The Harvard-Hoechst agreement and subsequent interactions with Peptech and Promega followed the Harvard-Monsanto agreement. Each of these has brought major resources to the Laboratory and to the School.

In addition to working with industry on collaborative research projects, the Director devised tutorial instruction for top managers and members of the legal professional who desire to learn about the new biology but have neither the time nor inclination to take formal courses. Among these students was a former CEO of the Millipore Corporation.

In 1980, Edgar Bronfman, learning about the work of the Laboratory in the field of ethanol metabolism, established an endowment which would allow the laboratory to pursue biological, genetic and pharmaceutical approaches to the treatment of alcoholism as well as other biomedical interests. This endowment, which still supports much of the work of the Center (the CBBSM was established on execution of the Bronfman bequest), has been used to develop a promising, chemically rational approach to the treatment of experimental alcoholism in animals. This approach is now ready for clinical trial (see below).

The Center has always welcomed visiting scientists from around the world; some of these have now joined the Center’s Advisory Committee (see Appendix II). The importance of this activity led the Director and his wife to establish the Bert L. and N. Kuggie Vallee Foundation, Inc., whose principal purpose is to provide support for visiting professors at Harvard and elsewhere.

With this history, the CBBSM continues to promote a broad research program in the biomedical sciences with an eye to its relevance for medicine. It is a site of continued inquiry and discovery.

Last updated: February 1, 2002