hst training review

interviewer: so this is the150th anniversary interview with professor tyler jacks. and you're a local person, sowhy don't you tell me a little bit about growingup in this area. jacks: well, i guess i'mlocal on two levels. one, i did grow up inmassachusetts and spent my entire adolescencethrough college, actually, in the area. knew about mit in general terms,but more specifically

my father was on thefaculty here. so in that in that sensei'm very local. i used to get my healthcare fromthe mit medical services as a boy and wouldcome in with my father on those occasions. and sometimes attend classesas a high school student or even younger just to get a senseof what mit was really like from that perspective. so i've been i've been aroundthe institute actually since

my early childhood. interviewer: so what wasit like being in classes as a kid? jacks: a bit intimidating. i remember several examples,actually, of professors recognizing me part way throughthe lecture and stopping and staring at me andat least on a few occasions saying, what the heckit you doing here? and of course i didn'tknow very much.

i was there just to kind of takein the atmosphere, not so much take in the information. but i was obviously extremelyimpressed by the scale and scope and wonder of mit in theeyes of a small child. interviewer: what departmentwith your father in? tyler jacks: he was on thefaculty of the sloan school. so he taught labor relationsin the sloan school and was very involved in the sloanexecutive program. so that was my perspectiveat the time, was

more through sloan. but actually when i would visitcampus i would sample classes in differentdisciplines. and my brother, actually,was a undergraduate student here, as well. so when i was entering highschool and going through high school he was in college here. interviewer: now, you'rea science person. so were you always interestedin science?

jacks: my interest in sciencegrew over time. i certainly was interestedbeginning in high school, but i was interested in many thingsin high school and didn't really know what careerpath i would take. the fact is that when i went tocollege, and i didn't go to mit, i went up the road. interviewer: you cansay the name. tyler jacks: yeah, iwent to harvard. there's actually an interestingstory about the

decision to go to harvardversus at least consider coming to mit. and it relates to yourquestion, actually. the fact is that hadi known then-- that is as a high school studentthinking about where to go to college --that i wasgoing to become a scientist and ultimately become a cancerresearcher, i might well have chosen to come to mit. but at the time i didn't know.

and in fact, if i'd had tochoose a career as a high school senior it probably wouldhave been as a lawyer or as a politician. i was very interested inthat sort of thing. my father was a lawyer. my brother was in lawschool at the time. so for me the decision camea little bit later. it actually was influenced verystrongly by a course that i took as an undergraduateduring my sophomore year in

molecular biology by a wonderfullecturer by the name of david dressler, who wasable to both convey the necessary information about thebudding new discipline of molecular biology, but also theexcitement and the power of that discipline. so based on that experience-- very much, largely based on thatexperience and then at the end of that year joining hislaboratory --i became more and more committed.

so starting at around the endof my sophomore year i was quite certain that i would gointo biological sciences. interviewer: what was it thatwas so enthralling about it-- for someone who is so interestedin different things --what clicked about that? jacks: well, for me, theinterest in science and the interest in biology inparticular, relates to a larger interest i have in andhad at the time, even --in understanding how things work;understanding how the

component parts of a morecomplex system fit together and function to allow that morecomplex machine to carry out it's work. as a younger individual in highschool i used to take cars apart and put them backtogether to make to non-functional carsfunctional. and i think it was that interestwhich really carried through, ultimately, tounderstand then how cells work and how they become defective inthe development of disease.

and particularly, that coursethat i took it as a sophomore and learning about therecombinant dna revolution-- this was in the early 1980s--when cloning-- not organismal cloning but dnagenetic engineering, let's call it --was just becomingfeasible and dna sequencing was being developed, actuallyright down the hall from where i was doing my research. we were beginning to be ableto manipulate the genetic material of cells and in thatway investigate much more

thoroughly how they contributeto normal cell behavior, normal development, andultimately disease. and i got to participate in thateven as an undergraduate researcher. so that was just captivating tome and it really was quite quickly that i decidedthis is what i wanted to do for a living. interviewer: you spent a sortof important year living in cambridge--

jacks: how do you know that? interviewer: i didmy homework. --and i wonder if you wouldtalk about how that was an influence on you. jacks: well it's true that ilived in cambridge, mass. one year growing up wheni was in fourth grade. as i mentioned, my father wason the mit faculty so he was always commuting to work fromsouthborough, which is where i had grown up, and my motheractually inherited a house in

cambridge not far from theharvard divinity school. and we decided to move there. so we moved in 1970,i believe. and it was a tremendous yearfor me on many levels. it was 1970 cambridge, so thiswas the end of the 60s. the vietnam war was stillongoing; there were a lot of protests with the sort of freelove, drug generation. i was only 10, but nevertheless i watched it happen.

my brother's seven years olderso he was participating. and so it was just a lotof fun, actually. but more importantly, perhaps,i attended what was then called the agassi school incambridge and had a fantastic teacher there; a womannamed susie carpel-- who was a bit of a free spiritherself --and was very much committed to expanding the mindsof her young students and taught us lots of differentthings and allowed us to teach each other.

it was a very non-traditionalclassroom and really got me excited about the whole learningprocess in a way that i hadn't experienced beforeand probably haven't experienced since. so she had a big affect on myinterest in education and learning, and the differentways that education and learning can be exciting. interviewer: and aftera year your parents decided, no more cambridge.

jacks: yeah, it wasn't quite-- they didn't decide againstcambridge. it's somewhat of a mundaneexplanation, unfortunately; couldn't sell their housein southborough. so as a consequence we soldthe house in cambridge and regretted it, actually,ever since. but that was a necessity. interviewer: was it difficultto go back to southborough? jacks: it wasn't terriblydifficult to go back.

i had lots of friends there,obviously, and it was a very different lifestyle. inner-city cambridge versus muchmore rural southborough. and they were lots of thingsthat i liked about southborough, as well, so itreally wasn't difficult transition. but given the effect that thefourth grade had on me, it would have been interesting toplay the tape forward had i stayed in cambridge and whatmight have happened as a

consequence. interviewer: so tell me how youwound up picking harvard. jacks: well, the decision to goto harvard was influenced by a number of things. as i said, i'm from this areaso i know these institutions quite well. and i think i knew pretty wellthe differences between harvard and mit, for example,at the time. with mit being wonderful forscience and math and

engineering, and harvard beingalso very good in those areas, but also very good in a broaderrange of areas. and so for me, harvard made moresense at the time because i didn't know at thattime exactly what i was going to do. my father had gone to harvard,so that was also part of my upbringing and it was a goal forme from some point during my education. as i said, my father was on thefaculty here and then, and

even now, there's the incentiveto have your children attend this universitybecause of the contribution to tuition. which at the time --and ithink it's still true. i should know this but i don't--the tuition for your children is waived. so it's free, at leaston a tuition basis. so my father had great incentiveto have me come to mit and actually offeredme a sports car if i

would come to mit. interviewer: and thatdidn't do it? jacks: it didn't do it. actually, i didn't evenapply in the end. i got accepted earlyto harvard. so i accepted that invitationand that was that. interviewer: and youdon't regret it? jacks: no, i had a wonderfultime at harvard, actually. i learned a lot.

i had a wonderful experienceeducationally. i got very involved in researchas an undergraduate, which was extremely importantto my ultimate career development. met a lot of wonderful people,many of whom are friends to this day. so i had a great time there,actually, and if i'm asked by undergraduate students, shouldi go to harvard or to mit or to some other institution, ialways have good things to say

about the harvard experience. it's very dependent on thekid, obviously, and what they're looking for and reallywhat their approach is. but both are wonderfulinstitutions. interviewer: so this researchyou got involved in sophomore year was about leukemia,correct? tyler jacks: that's correct. interviewer: can you talk alittle bit about what you were involved in and yourcontribution

and what was going? jacks: yeah, i was working on aleukemia induced by a virus, called the frienderythroleukemia virus-- identified years earlier bywoman named charlotte friend -- and this virus causesleukemia in animals, not in humans. and we had access toleukemic cells derived from those animals. we were really trying tounderstand what it was in

those cells, what the virus haddone to those cells, that had blocked their normalfunction and normal development and in a senselocked them into this leukemic state. our approach at the time wasto try to understand the regulation of the genes ofthose cells and how they differed from normalblood cells. there was then, and there stillis, a great interest in the details of how genes areturned on and turned off.

all cells have the samedna compliment-- now we know it's about 20,000genes --but different cells differ in which of thatcollection is turned on and therefore turned off. and the different celltypes in our body differ in that respect. these leukemic cells had failedto turn on certain genes that should have beenon, given the type of cell that they were.

so we want to understand thatprocess and use these leukemic cells to dig into the detailsof this gene expression regulation. interviewer: was this workso influential to you? did you decide become the cancerresearcher based on this experience? jacks: it was based on thatexperience and other things happening more or lessat the same time.

the research that i did as anundergraduate related to cancer, but it also relatedto the regulation of gene expression, which is muchbroader than cancer. and i could easilyhave gone into-- based on that experience --icould have easily gone into some other aspect ofbiology research. but it did introduce me to someof the problems of cancer and it got me interested inthe problems of cancer. in addition, i was takingclasses including classes

about cancer. and cancer was at a veryinteresting point just then because we were beginningto understand the genes that are altered-- specifically mutated --in thedevelopment of cancers, not just in experimental animals,but also in humans. and there was a very influentialmoment that occurred right aroundthat time. i think it was probably inthe spring of 1983--

i might be off by a year,probably the spring of '83. probably the spring of '82,actually, because i know when the paper was published --duringthis course in cancer biology, which was a seminarstyle course, and the professors would invite inexperts in different areas of cancer research, and theyinvited an expert from down the road here at mit, a guynamed bob weinberg. and weinberg described in hislecture to us some ongoing research in his lab which hadidentified a human cancer gene

for the first time throughwhat is now a classic experiment. and that was justamazing to me. i got extremely excited aboutthe potential for understanding cancer at thegenetic level and the implications of that; what itwould mean if we understood cancer at the genetic levelultimately to try to control the disease. so that exposure to that typeof work from weinberg.

we also learned about workfrom researchers out in california. mike bishop and harold varmus,who ultimately won the nobel prize for their discoveriesof cancer genes. and as you may know aftercollege, i went to the university of california sanfrancisco and worked for varmus, so it was kind of lockedin at that early point. interviewer: so what is it youwere looking for when you thought about graduate school?

and how did you windup in california? jacks: my choice for graduateschool was a combination of regional interests andscientific interests. i'd grown up in massachusetts. i'd spent really my entire lifein massachusetts through college, and was anxious toexperience a different part the country. so i applied mostly to schoolsin california, actually. and there are many terrificinstitutions there, all of

which i probably wouldhave been happy at. at the end of the day i wasdeciding between stanford and ucsf and berkeley. ucsf was most attractive to mepartly because of the fact that bishop and varmuswere there. but it wasn't only that. i liked the fact that it was amedical campus and there were opportunities to experience bothbiological research and things medical.

in fact shortly after i arrivedat ucsf, literally within a couple of weeks, i wasapproached by somebody in the md/phd program, which is thejoint degree program where you get both the medicaldegree and a phd-- i'd gone to ucsf as a phdstudent --but i was approached by this individual asking mewhether i was interested in joining the jointdegree program. which i hadn't really seriouslyconsidered in college and in fact hadn't takenthe mcat exam, so i was

i was not eligible to goto medical school. but i was asked whether i wasinterested just based on my general interest in biomedicalresearch and ultimately did join that program. so ucsf being at this interfacebetween biology, biomedical research,and medicine was particularly appealing. interviewer: not having takenthose exams was not a problem? tyler jacks: it was a bigproblem, actually.

they couldn't accept me. the person who had raised thisas a possibility thought we could make a work around,but it turned out that was not doable. so i was not accepted into theprogram straight away. had i been, everything wouldhave been different in my career, i expect. because had i been acceptedright then, i would have gone to medical school.

that's the typical course foran md/phd student; you spent two years at medical school,then you take a break, do your phd, and then you come backto medical school. and had i been accepted rightaway i would have gone to medical school classes,and who knows what would've happened. because i hadn't taken mcat,i couldn't do that. so i instead i did my firstyear courses of graduate school, took the mcat exam inthe spring, got accepted into

the program at the end of thatfirst year, and then an interesting thing happened: ihad decided to join the varmus lab, and actually had started myresearch project, and i was sent two letters of acceptancefrom the md/phd program, one of which said, congratulations,we want you to start medical schoolnext fall. and the second letter said,congratulations, you can finish your phd studies, andthen when you're done with your phd studies you cango to medical school.

so i answered the secondletter and decided to finish my phd. and by the time i finish myphd i was so excited about research and very intent ona research career, that i couldn't fathom going to medicalschool and doing the medical training, whichtakes a long time. so i decided not to go tomedical school, and i think i'm the only example of md/phdstudent at ucsf who's bagged in that fashion.

i don't think they take studentslike me anymore. interviewer: well, theycertainly wouldn't take somebody and let themdo the phd first. jacks: that's what i mean. they have many examples ofpeople who decide to leave the program for one reason oranother, but i don't think they'd let them do it in thesequence that they let me. interviewer: so whatwas it like working in the varmus lab?

jacks: it was a very excitingtime in the varmus lab. when i joined, actually, itwas the bishop-varmus lab; they ran a joint lab on thesame floor at ucsf. so it was a very large labfull of terrific people working on, mostly, aspects ofcancer genetics but also aspects of retrovirology. there was a subset of the group,both groups, i guess, who were interested in howretroviruses reproduce themselves.

that's relevant to cancerbecause we learned about cancer genes in part throughthe study of retroviruses, which can cause cancer inexperimental animals. but it's also interestingfrom a purely virological point of view. and ironically, even though icame to ucsf to work on cancer and i joined the varmus lab towork on cancer, i actually studied retrovirology there. my project was very much aboutbasic questions in the

retroviral life cycle. that was also extremely excitingthough, because the hiv virus-- the virus thatcauses aids --was discovered right then, and i got toparticipate, actually, in understanding some of the basic,fundamental mechanisms by which hiv reproduces itselfand published a couple of papers on that, too. interviewer: your timinghas been excellent. jacks: yeah.

no, it's been good, yeah. luck plays a big role here. interviewer: were there anyother besides your molecular biology person, any othermentors or really influential professors who impacted yourdecisions along the way? jacks: well, i've had terrificteachers throughout, actually. i won't list of them by name,but even we talked about a fourth grade teacher and iactually had terrific teachers throughout school, throughhigh school.

i went to public high schools,actually and really committed individuals from a lot ofdifferent disciplines. and likewise in college:terrific teachers. but i think for me the mostinfluential ones have been the ones who sort of shaped to mydecision to go into science. and that continues. we haven't talked about mypost-doctoral phase, we might in a moment, but weinberg, whomwe've mentioned already, was obviously extremelyimportant in the last phase of

my training. interviewer: so how did you windup finishing your phd and then working withrobert weinberg? jacks: the decision to join bobweinberg's lab was also very much influenced bydevelopments in the field taking place at that time. so now we're talking aboutthe mid- 1980s, '86, '87 time frame. i had worked on retrovirology,and a very, very specific

aspect of retrovirology:ribosomal frameshifting, which is pretty obscure stuff. and pretty far removed fromcancer, actually. and throughout the time that iwas doing my phd studies, i knew that i would returnto cancer. i was doing that because itwas exciting at the time. it was new. i learned a lot in doing it. but i knew that it was just achapter and it wasn't going to

be continued thereafter. i was looking for an opportunityto return to cancer and in that period oftime, we were learning about a new class of cancer genes. the first class of cancer genes,the first era of cancer genes, involve whatwe call oncogenes. and the work that i describedearlier involving weinberg's discovery and bishop and varmus'discoveries related to the discovery of oncogenes.

these genes promote cancerdevelopment when mutated by in a sense locking the cell intoa phase in which they proliferate continuously. in the '80s, a new class ofcancer genes was being appreciated. we call them tumor suppressorgenes now, and they act in the opposite fashion. they act as the brakes onthe cell division cycle. and they are involved in cancerwhen mutated or lost.

so we were just learning aboutthis new class and this class caught my attention not onlybecause it was clear that these genes that were importantin cancer, but also there were people who hadinherited mutant copies of these genes and byvirtue of that mutation, were cancer prone. so we were beginning to seethe nature of familial predisposition to cancer,specifically involving the loss of function of these tumorsuppressor genes, and

that i found very,very interesting. so that was one setof influences. the best studied of that classof genes was something called the retinoblastoma tumorsuppressor gene: rb. and bob weinberg's labhad cloned it. so that was on my radarscreen, for sure. separately, unrelated work wasdeveloping the ability to make mice with mutations inany gene of interest. it was very nascentat that time.

in fact, only the proofof principal experiments had been done. nobody had mutated aninteresting gene by the mid 1980s, but the technology wasbeing developed to allow that to be done. so i decided, in probably like1987, that i would apply this new technology, gene targetingtechnology or knockout technology, to create mice thathad a mutation in the retinoblastoma tumor suppressorgene in order to

make a mouse model of thefamilial cancer syndrome associated with mutationof the very same gene. so that was the idea which ithen pitched to weinberg. he probably thought i wascrazy at the time. i think he would even admitthat, but i decided i would give it a go and that's whati did as a postdoc. interviewer: did you at anypoint think about heading off in the hiv directionfor your career? tyler jacks: i did briefly.

i was a graduate student between'83 and '88, and hiv was described in '83. i mean it was really very mucha major topic of scientific investigation, and i was workingin san francisco, which was a hot spotof the infection. so i certainly thought aboutit, but frankly i was committed to a careerin cancer research. that's what i reallywanted to do. so although i thought aboutit-- and i certainly could

have done that given thetraining that i had --i was much more interested in goingin the direction of cancer. interviewer: is there a whereto articulate why you think that was? what was it about cancer thatgenerated that sort of commitment? jacks: it's a good question andi've thought about that. i have not been closely,personally affected by the disease.

it wasn't like i came from afamily in which we had a lot of cancers and i knew as a smallchild that i needed to solve this scourge. on the other hand, i think iprobably did appreciate even than what a big problemit was. and i think the thing thatattracted me was the notion that by understanding thedisease better, we could actually develop bettertherapies. that there was an opportunityto use science to inform us

about the disease-- so from avery basic science kind of perspective --but that thatinformation can be used ultimately to come up withbetter therapies. because everybody knew-- i certainly knew --but i thinkeverybody understands that cancer treatmentsare barbaric. it's almost embarrassing howcrude most cancer therapies-- certainly at the time,and largely still true today --are.

and so there was a tremendousopportunity to do good. it was interesting, but alsothere was an opportunity to change the paradigm in terms ofhow cancers were treated. i think that's probablywhat drove me even from that early stage. interviewer: you had lots ofexperiences at mit, but do you remember sort of whatyou thought when you actually came here? jacks: yes, i rememberit very well.

my arrival in the spring of1988 was very exciting. i was joining the whiteheadinstitute, which had opened probably three or four yearsbefore and was considered widely as a mecca of biomedicalresearch. david baltimore was thedirector at the time. bob weinberg was there, rudyjaenisch, harvey lodish, a tremendous group of talentedinvestigators. being funded in a slightlydifferent way with this large philanthropic gift, it was avery exciting place to work.

and it was part of the largermit community which i did know, but from a very differentperspective, and began to appreciate actuallymore fully upon my arrival. mit had had and was developingamong the best, if not the best, department of biologyin the country. and so the whitehead was partof that larger community. the center for cancer research,which i ultimately became part of, was alsopart of that community. so there was just a tremendouscollection of people doing

really interesting work in thearea that i had chosen. so it was a great, great timeto be a postdoctoral fellow. interviewer: you said that youbecame even more impressed when you started working here. what was it thatimpressed you? what was different inyour perspective? jacks: well, mit is differentin its approach to research, in its approach to scholarship,in its approach to education, inmy experience.

i was impressed and remainimpressed by the commitment of our faculty to the educationalprocess as a whole, the degree to which our very establishedfaculty colleagues get involved in all aspects of theeducational process, from undergraduate to graduatetraining, post doctoral training, and their ownresearch in their laboratories. it didn't have to be that way. these folks who are so wellaccomplished could have

developed big egos and led themto lock themselves away in their ivory towers, neverto be seen again. but it's not that way at all. it's a highly collegial, veryinteractive, collaborative environment. lots of interactionsbetween labs. and these guys participate inthe educational process. so that surprised me. and it made the wholeexperience, even as a postdoc,

but certainly since then as afaculty member, much more pleasurable. i felt a part of a communitythat i think doesn't exist in every similar outstandingresearch university. interviewer: did it have adifferent feel than your experience at harvardand ucsf? jacks: yes, it did. and i don't mean to demean anyother institution, but i think that the overall approach atharvard is slightly different,

if not more substantiallydifferent. at least at the time; ishouldn't say that it is today because i don't really know. but i think the degree ofinteraction amongst the faculty, the engagement of thefaculty in the educational process, is different. harvard is also a different typeof university; it's much broader in its scope. mit is more focused on scienceand technology, which i think

adds to its ability to beinteractive across those disciplines. ucsf was different because itdoesn't have undergraduates. it's a different type ofcampus altogether. and i think the undergraduatesand the fact that we're a university contributes tothe atmosphere here. so it actually did feelquite different. and i've obviously experiencedmany other universities through my travels, and i thinkit still stands alone in

the kind of unique characterof this place. interviewer: are there any otherthings that you would point to as being uniqueabout mit? jacks: i think ourundergraduates are unique. i think the kinds of kids whocome here are very talented, very committed, verymotivated. they're very smart. they know a lot about-- typically --they know a lotabout science and math and

aspects of technologywhen they come. i think that probably onlycaltech would compare with respect to an undergraduatepopulation. so that, i think, is unusualabout this place, and the undergraduates add a lotto our work and to the atmosphere. the other thing that's unusualabout mit is, and it relates to my comment earlier aboutinteraction and sort of lack of ego, people here areinterested in interacting with

colleagues aroundthe university. it happens in different waysand probably to different extents, depending on thespecific circumstances, but there are lots of examplesof such interactions. but that doesn't have to betrue, and it isn't true it at other universities. i think it's helped by the factthat we are a university of science and technology. that's what thisplace is about.

and the leadership of ouruniversity, between our deans and our provosts and ourpresident, understand that. they grew up in that culture andthey can help foster and facilitate those kindsof interactions and that kind of culture. so that's unusual about mit. interviewer: i've been verystruck in doing these interviews with the extent towhich collaboration is a natural, daily part of howthings are done here, and that

seems very unique to me. tyler jacks: yeah. i think it's becoming morecommon, collaboration, but it's something that's beenhappening at mit for a long time; it's part ofthe culture here. collaboration within a givendiscipline amongst faculty in particular department, forexample, but also across and that aspect is growingconsiderably. and i've been very involved inthat through the establishment

of koch institute, which is allabout cross disciplinary interaction and collaboration. but i think it's part ofthe fabric of mit. i think it's part of the m.o.of this institution, is to promote those kindsof interactions. and to bring people togetherwho've see things from different perspectives,hopefully with the goal of solving the problems. that's another part of thefabric of mit; it's very much

about solving problems, whichis not always the same for a research university. you could describe that more asjust defining the problems, but mit has a very practicalaspect to it. and that can be benefited, ithink, by bringing people together who represent differentpoints of view and different disciplines. interviewer: and another thingthat we've actually talked about here, and listening to anumber of these interviews, is

it seems to be pretty easy hereto do something new, to try something. jacks: yes. interviewer: have you had anypersonal experiences or, you know, like that? tyler jacks: well i've had manyexperiences where i've been encouraged to try somethingnew, from within my own laboratory to amuch larger scale. i think all good or greatuniversities encourage their

faculty to go beyond, to developnew ideas and new approaches. in that sense the mit approachis consistent with many such universities' approaches. but i would say my experiencein terms of trying something new which was particularlynoteworthy with respect to the mit experience, was the kochinstitute project, where the decision to develop a new cancerresearch institute that involves cancer scientists andengineers was very new, risky,

expensive, you could argue abit of a gamble, but i was given tremendous support, aswere all the others who've been involved in this projectfrom all the levels of our administration. because it seemed like it hadthe potential to do something very different andvery powerful. it resonated well withwhat mit is about. and so i agree: that sort ofattitude that we don't have to stay locked into our commonapproaches let's try something

different, is morecommon here. interviewer: this is probably asgood a time as any to walk through that sort of historyof the center for cancer research and then howit sort of evolved. can you tell me that story? tyler jacks: yeah, so the storyof the center for cancer research and it's transitionto the koch institute is a long one, and actually goesback to the early 1970s. mit had already establisheditself is a major center of

biological research based oninvestments that had occurred 20 years before. and one of the people who hadled that was salvador luria, who was a geneticist, veryinstrumental in understanding the fundamental nature of dnaand the genetic code. he came to mit and continued onresearching the fundamental nature of cells and genes anddna and won a nobel prize for that work, by the way. and in the late 1960s, early1970s, there was a discussion

in washington to create newcenters for cancer research as a product of the national canceract that richard nixon signed into law indecember of 1971. and mit was poised toapply for funding through that mechanism. jim watson, actually, was veryinstrumental in that bill and argued strongly that the moneyshouldn't just go to clinical centers, but also to basicresearch centers. and mit responded to thatopportunity by putting in an

application for a new center forcancer research that luria would head. that application was successful,the center was established, and with money fromthe federal government as well as from mit, an old candyfactory was purchased-- the brigham's candy factory --and outfitted for prep so there were 13 laboratoriesestablished at the time. and luria was masterful inassembling a tremendous team of young investigators.

david baltimore, nancy hopkins,phil sharp, richard hynes, ultimately susumutonegawa, many others, several of whom are still onour faculty today. and they then investedthemselves into understanding the fundamental natureof cancer. the argument being, wedidn't know anything. and that was true. we literally knew almost nothingabout how cancer cells differed from normal cellsat the molecular level.

and because the tools ofgenetic engineering and molecular biology were justbecoming operative, the approach was to try tounderstand cancer at the molecular level, atthe genetic level. and that group contributedsignificantly to our current understanding of howcancer cells differ from normal cells. many important discoveries,not just about how cancers develop, but also about thefundamental nature of

mammalian cells, human cells. phil sharp's discovery ofsplicing, for example, was done in the context of a virusthat can cause cancer in animals, but actually led toan appreciation about how genes are organized in ourcells much more broadly. anyway, they together, from thatearly point and i would say on through until thecurrent era, have made significant contributionsto how cancer develops. interviewer: can you namea few of those?

jacks: well, i've mentionedsplicing, as an example; phil sharp's discovery. bob weinberg's work in discoveryof the first human oncogene took place in thecenter for cancer research david baltimore's work inunderstanding the fundamental nature of multiple cancer genes,including one called abl kinase, which was thenappreciated to be involved in certain human leukemias. and that discovery ultimatelyled to the development of a

small molecule drug calledgleevec, which is now used successfully in the treatmentof that disease. richard hynes' lab discoveredcomponents of the extracellular matrix and thereceptors that bind to the extracellular matrix, which isvery important in how cancer cells form their structuresand move around and metastasize. there are innumerable examplesof fundamental discoveries. and again, on to this dayjackie lees' work, for

example, understanding theretinoblastoma protein and how it controls the cell cyclethrough its interactions with transcription factorscalled e2fs. angelica ammon's discoveries ofthe fundamental nature of the cell cycle, which againbecomes deranged in the development of cancer. so these contributions startedearly and continue on to the current era. now in terms of the telling ofthe story, back in probably

the mid 90s, richard hynes,the director at the time, began to lobby theadministration that it was time to think abouta new building. the old candy factory had sortof served its time and was beginning to show it's age. we really did need to replaceit, but there are other priorities and we ultimatelywere not successful in getting that approved. i then took over in 2001 andtook up the challenge of

lobbying for a newbuilding for the center for cancer research. and in fact got approval at onelevel, at least, from our previous president chuck vest,and our previous provost bob brown that yes, thatwas right. we needed to do that. we even got the site approved onmain street across from the whitehead institute. but we hadn't done much detailedplanning at the time

and chuck was on his way outas president, and he didn't want to make any furthercommitments that might burden the new incoming president. so susan hockfield arrived andshe and i begin to talk about the future of cancerresearch at mit. and she began toask me what was happening in cancer research. and i talked about some of thesefundamental discoveries that i've just mentioned toyou and how wonderful our

cancer scientists were, but ialso started to talk to her about some new developmentsinvolving not just cancer scientists, biologists, but alsoengineers, with whom we had begun to interactproductively. and this was relatively new. the long history of the centerfor cancer search had rather few examples of interactionswith engineering colleagues, but in the previous couple ofyears we began to reach out more extensively to ourengineering colleagues.

from biological engineering todo, for example, computational and mathematical modeling ofcomplex problems in cancer biology, to our nanotechnologycolleagues to think about new delivery vehicles for cancerdrugs or new imaging agents for cancer. these had led ultimately tolarge grants from the national cancer institute to supportthis interdisciplinary approach for cancer search. and when i started to mentionthese things, her face lit up

and she said, that soundsparticularly interesting, and we should work on enhancing thatkind of cancer research. which i was very pleased tohear, and frankly surprised she took it one step further. as we begin to talk about a newbuilding for the center for cancer research and a newbuilding that would house the cancer scientists from thecenter for cancer search, she actually said something like,you're thinking too small. the new building shouldbe bigger than that.

it should include the cancerscientists, but it should also include those engineers. and we should create a new typeof cancer center here at mit that would be veryinterdisciplinary. i was surprised to hear it justbecause it had been such a fight to get approval ofa 1x sized building. i never could've imaginedthat we would build a 2x sized building. but that's exactly what we weretalking about, and from

that point forward we actuallyset out to do exactly that, which has ultimately lead to thedevelopment of what we now call the koch institute forintegrative cancer research. the koch institute part reflectsthe fact that david koch, mit alumnus, cancersurvivor, very dedicated supporter of this institution,made ultimately a $100 million dollars plus contribution tohelp us build that new building and outfit it. we also had to organize thefaculty who would work in the

new interdisciplinarycancer institute. we identified engineers fromacross the mit campus working in many different engineeringdepartments. our original list had 10engineers, many of whom we had begun our interactions with bythen, some of whom we hoped to interact with in the future. we made 10 offers, and all 10offers were accepted to join us in this new building. and so for the last, oh boy,three, three and a half years,

we've been designing thatbuilding and now building that building. and in a few months time we'llmove into that new building. interviewer: i can imagine thatnot only would there be a lot of excitement in the mitcommunity about this sort of a joint venture, but that in thefield in general, was there a big reaction to thisnew vision? i think there was, and remains,and continues to be a lot of excitementand appreciation

for this new approach. and part of that is the inherentpower of bringing people from differentdisciplines together to think about cancer in new ways,approach the problem in new ways, but also it resonatesso well. it seems so right for mit to bedoing this for the cancer problem because we have suchtalent in science, in cancer biology, and in engineeringsciences and technologies. it is the perfect placeto take this approach.

and we have had clear validationfrom our colleagues about this idea. our cancer center is part of thenational cancer program, part of the national cancerinstitute's designated cancer centers program, and every fiveyears we get reviewed to see whether we're worthy of thatdesignation and our core grant is approved for furtherfunding based on that review. and we defended that grant mostrecently in the fall of last year, so six months ago.

and that was the first timewe were describing the new vision, the new institute. we talked glowingly about ourhistory in the center for cancer research and all thatwe had done, but we really focused on what wewere going to do. the power of bringingscientists and engineers together. examples of how we could do abetter job at understanding cancer on the one hand, but alsodeveloping new solutions

for the disease. we talked about the verytranslational aspects of what we were doing, the ability toturn our discoveries, whether basic science discoveries or newtechnologies, into ways to diagnose the disease in patientsmore rapidly or to treat patients inthe near term. and the reviewers wereextremely excited. and we got our reviews backand they were filled with comments like, paradigm shiftingnature of this

process, and how this was reallya high point in cancer research for the country,not just for mit. the review actually could nothave been more positive even if i had scripted it myself. so we're clearly on the righttrack here, and now the burden is on us to deliver. we haven't moved intothat building yet. we've begun some of thisinterdisciplinary work and we have many good examples of howit can be powerful, but when

we move in our opportunitieswill be that much greater because we will be sharingthe same building. we will have those chanceencounters in the hallway and in the lunchroom that we'vetalked about as being so powerful in precipitatingthe next great idea. that's to come. so we'll see what thefuture looks like. interviewer: do you have anyspeculation about that? are there specific things thatcould point to to say, you

know, here's what we're thinkingwe might see or discover in the next 10 years? tyler jacks: yeah, i think thereare specific examples of things that i think we will doand i'm confident we will do. i'm excited about those,and i'll tell you about those in a moment. i'll pick a few examples. but there are other things whichi can't anticipate, and i'm more excited about those.

because you know, those aregoing to be the products of these chance encounters. those are going to be theproducts of investigators from different disciplines comingtogether at this interface and thinking of something new thati haven't thought about yet. and those could easily be muchmore powerful than the ones i can imagine. but regarding the ones i canimagine, i'll just give you three brief examples toillustrate the point.

we now have in hand a technologythat could be transformative in cancertreatment. it's a technology thatderives from a natural cellular process. we call it rna interference. it was only discovered a decadeago; it's already lead to a nobel prize for the twoindividuals who discovered it. one of whom was a formergraduate student of phil sharp, again, a guynamed andy fire.

the other discoverer is craigmellow from umass worcester. and rnai has the potential toallow you to silence, shut off, inactivate, anygene of interest. because cancer is in its essencea genetic disease-- it's a disease in which genesdon't function properly --if one could silence a criticalcancer gene, it could turn that cancer cell intoa more normal cell. or it could cause that cancercell to stop dividing or to die, which would be extremelypowerful.

and there many such genes thatwe've identified, several of which encode proteins that aredifficult to drug in a classical sense to, find a smallmolecule inhibitor to interfere with, or an antibodyto interfere with. but with rnai , it doesn'tmatter what the gene encodes. it's indiscriminate. it can shut off any gene. so that's tremendously powerful,and phil sharp actually started a companywith this in

mind, called alnylam. the challenge is to get theserna molecules, which do the silencing, into thecells of interest. this is a delivery problem. and our colleaguesin engineering, bob langer and others-- sangeeta bhatia, others --aredeveloping new materials for improved delivery of rnaimolecules, which will be in the clinic, i suspect,within the year.

and if successful, could reallychange the nature of cancer treatment. so that's one. and depends on cancer science,biology, and engineering. the second example comesin that area of cancer immunology. in theory, your immune systemshould recognize these abnormalities that occurin your cells that lead ultimately to cancerand eliminate

those abnormal cells. ideally that would be true,but because humans develop cancer, we know itultimately fails. the question is why? and we're beginning to learn,through our understanding of immunology and cancer biology,some of the mechanisms by which cancers controlthe immune system. which they do, actively. we need to be able to overcomethose types of inhibition to

allow the immune system to fightcancer more effectively. and some of our engineeringcolleagues like darrell irvine, chemical engineer,material scientist, is developing new approaches using,again, nanotechnology, to soup-up, over-stimulate thecells of the immune system, to counteract the negative effectsthat the tumor has to allow those cells todo a better job. and again, in preclinical modelsof cancer, they're working extremely well and ibelieve will be tested, again,

in the near term. and i'm quite hopefulabout them. final example, also in the areaof technology and science coming together, is incancer monitoring. so we know that cancersdevelop over time. cancers when treated can go intoremission, but ultimately can relapse. and for all these things wewould like to be able to monitor the state of the diseasemore actively then we

currently do. we're not very good aboutknowing the specific nature of an individual's diseaseover time. we do screening tests, butwe do them periodically. and the disease could bechanging substantially in between the times thatwe look at it. so michael cima and bob langerand others are developing new technologies to implant sensorsinto the body, for example at the time of biopsy,that would allow one to track

the state of the disease overtime continuously and, if a change occurs, to send a signalback out of the body to the individual, or morepractically, their oncologist to begin to treat the diseaseat that time. this technology is movingrapidly along, and i think michael will deploy a deviceof this sort in patients within the next coupleof years. so these are things that arevery much on the horizon. i can see how theywill take shape.

they're, in my view, wonderfulexamples of the power of bringing cancer scientists andengineers and clinicians together around a problem. but as i said earlier, the evenmore powerful ideas i haven't even thought of yet. interviewer: you are sitting, asdirector, in a seat that's very exciting at a veryexciting time. can you talk a little bitabout the administrative responsibilities that you haveand the appeal of that and

also how you balance that withyour own personal research? jacks: sure. i agree that it's an excitingtime; no question about it. i've been fortunate, really, tobe given the opportunity to help lead this effort to createa new type of cancer research institute here at mit,and i've done so with enthusiasm. it's been a bit ofwork, to be sure. beyond just the design andexecution of a building

project, we're also developinga new culture which is exciting and has itsown challenges. we're bringing togetherindividuals from different disciplines who approachproblems in different ways. don't necessarilyknow each other. don't know each other'slanguages terribly well. and so that has added, i wouldsay, to the challenge and also to the fun, i think. because it's interesting towatch this process of

educating one's colleaguesunfold. so i've enjoyed my role asdirector very much, and i've been extremely well supportedin that role. i have two associatedirectors-- jackie lees is on the scienceside, dane wittrup on the engineering side --who help methink through the plan and execute the plan. i've been extremely supportedby the mit administration really since day one.

this is a complicated project. it involves the school ofengineering as well as the school of science, thereforethe dean of engineering as well as the dean of science. it involves multiple departmentsat mit, i think seven different departmentsat mit. so the different departmentheads of those departments are also involved. we now report to the vicepresident for research at mit,

claude canizares, becausewe're a cross-school initiative. and i've interacted a lot withthe provost, rafael reif, and with the president,susan hockfield. quite a lot with the president,actually. she's been heavily engagedin this process. i mentioned since day one, shereally was a major impetus for bringing the notion of scienceand engineering together for cancer research at mit.

and she's been very involvedin helping us fundraise for the project, build enthusiasmwithin mit and outside of mit, build interactions particularlywith local hospitals and clinical centers,which is very important to our mission. so the job of director has beencomplex and has allowed me to engage with the mitcommunity very, very broadly, which has been quiteinteresting and exciting for me.

but it has made more challengingmy day job, which is as a cancer researcher. i've been running a cancerresearch lab, first in the center for cancer research,now in the koch institute since 1992. my lab has only gottenbigger over time. it didn't get smaller wheni became director. so i now have 17 graduatestudents and postdocs and eight technicians and about 10undergraduate students working

in my research lab. and my ability to direct theirresearch on a daily basis has been influenced byadministrative responsibilities. interviewer: verytactfully put. jacks: but fortunately,i've attracted a terrific group of people. and i select them, in part,based on their ability to function independently.

so the research in the lab hasactually gone on well. i think we're doing our bestwork we've ever done despite the fact, maybe becauseof the fact, that i'm around less often. interviewer: well, the sign of agood manager is to find good people and let themdo what they do. tyler jacks: yeah, it's true. delegation is key to thisbusiness and i have terrific people who are working with meboth in the institute and in

my own laboratory. my associate director foradministration, cindy quense, takes care of a lot of theday to day aspects of running the institute. and that's a big job, too,because we're creating this new institute, which is 2xin every way what the old institute was. and so there are a lot ofdetails to be worked through in that regard.

and likewise in my laboratory. i have a wonderful lab managerwho deals with a lot of the daily questions and issueson the lab front. interviewer: what's the appealto you personally? what have you found by beingan administrator, the accomplishments you can make inthat role that you aren't able to make in another role? jacks: well, i think they it'san excellent question. what is the motivation fortaking on a job like director

of, or head of, departmenthead, for example? on one level i think you doit out of obligation. others have done it before you,and so when it's your turn there's an expectationthat you will say yes, or you'll at least thinkabout it seriously. and i felt that at the time. richard hynes, who was thedirector before me, asked me whether i'd be willingto do so. i did think about it.

i was 40 years old at the time,and you know, still quite committed to my researchcareer, didn't know what impact it might have on myresearch career at that time. but i felt an obligation. he had done the jobfor 10 years. phil sharp had done thejob before him. salvadore luria had donethe job before him. and so i readily accepted. but i think what's even moreimportant is what you can do

in these administrativepositions. you can develop a new directionfor the institute, for mit, for cancer research,that you couldn't do in the context of your individuallaboratory. i couldn't have imagined at thetime that we were going to build the koch institute. but by virtue of the fact thati am the director, i've had a major role in figuring outwhat the future of cancer research at mit isgoing to be.

and i'm quite pleased, quitegratified, quite proud of the fact that i've had thatresponsibility, and excited about what we're goingto be able to there. interviewer: you likethe policy making? jacks: you know, thepolicy, it's-- i do like it. i do. i think it's challenging, it'srisky, you have to sort of stick your neck out andmake bold decisions.

let's go this way now. interviewer: and you'revery visible. jacks: i am? [laughs] interviewer: well,[interposing voices] when you stick your neckout, it's very public. yes, you are. you are taking a position anddefending that position, and i think it's important to do so.

you have to politic a bit and dosome convincing, get people on board, and not everybodywill be. and so there's a certainrisk there. but if you believe strongly,firmly, in your convictions, you don't feel compromisedin doing so. interviewer: so what's going atthe jacks laboratory now? jacks: well, the jackslaboratory, since its inception, has been about usingmore and more powerful tools in genetic engineeringto develop and study mouse

models of cancer. and we have succeeded, alongwith others in the field, to create very accurate models ofmajor human cancer types, like non-small cell lung cancerand pancreatic cancer. certain brain tumors. colon cancer. these are still big problemsin terms of treatment and survival times and soforth in humans. and our commitment has been todevelop better, more accurate

models of those humandiseases in part to understand the disease. and we can do experiments inthe context of experimental models that aren't possible,practical, or ethical in humans, and in that way to learnabout the details of the disease more deeply. and we can use those models totest better ways to diagnose, track, and treat cancer. and so we're doingall of the above.

and our technologies havegotten more and more sophisticated, and ourunderstanding of the diseases become more and more complete. and we're starting to be ableto see the fruits of that in terms of better treatments. interviewer: can you talk alittle bit more; you mentioned gleevec before. you haven't mentionedherceptin. so gleevec and herceptin aretwo now quite familiar

examples of molecularly targetedanti-cancer agents. and these derive from thefield's basic understanding of how cancers arise from normalcells through acquisition of mutations to cellular genes. those two drugs, gleevec andherceptin, are targeted against two different geneticalterations in two different types of cancer. chronic myologenous leukemia inthe case of gleevec, breast cancer in the caseof herceptin.

these are poster children of theinvestments, the value of the investment, in molecularoncology. they are proof of the valueproposition that by investing in basic cancer research,it will do something useful for patients. these drugs work by inhibitinga specific alteration in the cancer and largely, notcompletely, but largely have no side effects. and in that way they're betterbecause they're treating a

specific alteration in thecancer, and they're better tolerated, as well. and they represent the beginningof what will be the future of cancer treatment,where drugs will be targeted to specific alterations in anindividual's tumor, not just blasted with a nondiscriminantdna damaging drug or radiation. and we're just beginning tosee that future unfold. these are two examples.

they were approved by the fdawithin the last decade, and there are more coming. so our work is related to thatin the sense that a, we make some of those discoveries thatteach us about the fundamental nature of cancer which couldlead to new targets and new treatments, and we have themodel systems, in terms of these mouse models of cancer, totest the efficacy of these drugs or combinations of drugswhich would be most effective in a particular cancerof a particular type.

interviewer: so in addition tobeing better tolerated, these drugs are also more effective? jacks: these drugs are extremelyeffective for the particular cancers that havethose specific alterations. gleevec, for example, is usedin the treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia. in the past 100 percent ofpatients, as i understand it, 100 percent of patients--probably not really 100 percent --but the vast majorityof patients who had

that disease which hadprogressed to a point which we call blast crisis, where thedisease sort of exploding and accelerating, 100percent of those patients would have died. now with the treatment ofgleevec, the patients survive for a very long time. some are cured. and for those who aren't cured,whose disease does eventually come back, we nowhave a second generation of

drugs which work in theresistance class. so this is an example of acurative cancer treatment, which are few and far between,which is based entirely on our understanding of the molecularnature of the disease. that's what we'reshooting for. interviewer: what kind of timeframe do you see for this? at what point will radiation andchemotherapy actually be kind of relics of the past, andthere will be a medicine cabinet full of targeted drugsfor different kinds of cancer?

jacks: interviewers often askthe, when should we expect the better treatments, question. and it's a dangerous questionto try to answer because i don't have a specificanswer for you. what i say is that overtime-- and i'm thinking in the sortof 10 to 20 year time frame --we will begin to see examplesof treatments analogous to gleevec andherceptin for other major cancer types like pancreascancer, like advanced lung

cancer, like ovarian cancers,that are based on specific molecular alterationsin those patients. some of those drugsare coming. we already have in hand verygood inhibitors of some of these molecular targets. some of them are working verywell in the cancers in which they're being tested. it's not far enough along to sayfor sure that they will be curative or that they willnecessarily even lead to

longer survival times, but wecan see already that they're having good activityagainst the tumors that are being treated. so this gives us confidence thatthe examples of gleevec and herceptin are not one-off,that they really represent what the future willlook like. so again, my prediction is thatin the 10 to 20 your time frame we'll begin to see itcomplete shift away from the non-specific class to the veryspecific classes, which will

be rooted in moleculardiagnostic tests. in other words, lung cancerwill not be treated as a unitary disease, but lungcancers will be molecularly diagnosed based on theirspecific alterations. and the particular alterationswill then inform the particular therapy orcombination of therapies that are needed for that patient. interviewer: so it sounds likeit's going to be sort of almost a one disease, one kindof cancer at a time.

and so i agree with that. in the extreme, you could saythat every individual's tumor is different. now the challenge with that isthat we have 1.4 million people diagnosed in this countryevery year, and we can't really afford tocompletely sequence the genomes of every oneof those patients. sequencing technology isbetter now and more inexpensive and so we're notfar from being able to do

that, but i don't think we'llbe able to do that literally for every patient. now the good news is thatthere are patterns. it's not really truethat every tumor is completely different. there are patterns of mutationsthat we've observed. and probably thereare therefore subtypes of lung cancers. and the subtypes will be allresponsive to a particular

drug or drug treatmentregimen. so that's most likely whatthings look like, not necessarily individualto individual, but subtype to subtype. interviewer: so i'd like tospent some time talking about mit because clearly theenvironment has a lot to do with your work. perhaps more so with your workthan a lot of other people. you've talked about some ofthese; are there other ways in

which being at mit helps orhinders your research? jacks: i can't think of a waythat it hinders my research. well, actually, that'snot entirely true. i think there's one aspect ofthe nature of this university that we need to overcome to befully successful in my line of work and in the koch institute,for that matter. because mit does not have amedical school or take care of cancer patients, our access topatients or cancer material is more limited than it would beif we were somewhere else.

and so to overcome that problem,we actually do need to establish connectionsto clinical centers. and we've begun to do that,actually, through interactions with the mass general hospital,with the dana farber cancer institute, with thelahey clinic, and i think we'll do a lot more ofthat in the future. but we need to do so. we're also starting to hire,into the koch institute, oncologists who take care ofcancer patients by day and do

research in our laboratories bynight, which is another way to deal with this limitation. that's probably the onlylimitation i can think of. interviewer: do you foresee aday where there's a medical school here? tyler jacks: no, i don't. i think that we do what we dowell, and i don't know that we need to develop yet anothercapability. we have the health science andtechnology program, hst, which

interacts a lot with the medicalschool and helps train medical students. we have medical studentson our campus. but we don't have a medicalschool per se, we don't take care of patients, and i don'texpect that we will. we happen to be in one of thegreatest concentrations of biomedical research in theworld, so we should be able to interact productively,and we are. that, i think, is the moresensible way of developing.

in terms of the advantages, wehave touched on the fact that the university is about scienceand technology, and i think that really isthe key advantage. this university has a broadscope, but it is not an infinitely broad scope. it's interested in addressingthe world's problems, but addressing them through scienceand technology. and i think that focus ishelpful to all of us because it increases the localconcentration of experts in

relevant areas, because ouradministrators grew up in those fields and understand thenature of the work that we do; they can be particularlysupportive and understanding and thoughtful about our futureplans and strategies. so i think those helpus as well. and our workforce. our undergraduates are fantasticand contribute significantly. the reputation of mit as beingthe center of science and

technology in the united statesmeans that we can attract fantastic colleaguesas graduate students, as postdoctoral fellows from theunited states, but really from all over the world. so that's another tremendousadvantage that we have. and i think for us in thekoch institute, that group of people -- undergraduates, graduatestudents, and postdoctoral fellows --

are extremely important becausethose young, agile, less calcified minds are muchmore willing to branch out and take new approaches,especially these interdisciplinary approaches. they're less locked in to theirspecific training and backgrounds, they're morewilling to be exposed to things they don't understandso well. they're more ambitiousin that way. and so they will help us formthe kind of collaborations

that will be central to the workin the koch institute. interviewer: i can imaginethat in this culture the faculty would be more open tothe interdisciplinary approach than faculties at manyother institutions. jacks: it's true that we havea history of interaction and interdisciplinary work hereat mit, and there are many examples of it. even so, there is stillactivation energy. familiarity still has a placein determining the kinds of

interactions that you have. so it's true that we do havemany examples, and the koch institute is a prime example ofinterdisciplinary research. and it's true that mit hasa history of fostering interdisciplinary research. people say that you know, thewalls between our departments are less tall then they are atother institutions, and that's absolutely true. and i think it relates, in part,to what i said before,

that we have the concentrationof 1,000 faculty members at mit. the concentration of peoplewho are in science and technology is just that muchhigher than it would be at other places, and thereforethere's less territoriality. we sort of, in a sense, feelall part of one big department, in a way. but even with that, there'sstill work to be done in creating those bridges andcreating those opportunities

for bringing people together. interviewer: i like that imageof the graduate students and the postdocs sort of leadingthe faculty to be more open to new ideas. tyler jacks: yeah, they are veryimportant in the process. and we have lots of examplesof students who are being trained by a biologist on theone, and a chemical engineer on the other. and they begin to learnthe two languages.

it's like children who are lesslocked into their primary language and can learn multiplelanguages much more easily than an adult would. so yeah, they are very much theconduits of this kind of interviewer: is your vision thatthe koch center, is mit going to become kind of theforemost cancer research center in the world? jacks: i think the kochinstitute will be a beacon of outstanding cancer researchfocused on advanced science

and technology. i would never claim that itwill be the foremost. i think there will be multipleforemost cancer institutes in this country and aroundthe world. but in terms of the approachthat we are taking at this interface at science andtechnology, i think we're already the best. and we haven't even moved in. and by the time we do move inand establish that very

exciting culture that i'manticipating, then i think there will be nobody closeto us in this area. interviewer: is there anythingthat you would want the koch institute to do that it's notgoing to be, that's not part of the plans? jacks: you know, i think theone thing that's been on my mind of late-- and i think it's going toevolve, and we'll see how it evolves --academic institutionsrun by hiring

faculty and allowing thosefaculty to do what they find interesting. the koch institute has differenttypes of faculty. we have scientistsand engineers. they approach problemsfundamentally differently. scientists approach problemsto understand them. and the problem never stops; youunderstand the problem at one level, you dig downto the next level, and on, and on you go.

engineers approach problemsin a very different way. they're basically outto fix the problem. they need only as muchinformation as they need to fix the problem. the bringing together of thosetwo cultures is quite interesting, and that'sreally the power of the koch institute. now, my goal is to make thekoch institute very translational.

that is to say, the products ofour work make an impact in cancer patients. soon. it's not just aboutpublishing papers. it's not just about makingdiscoveries. it's about doing things thatimpact patient's lives. that's a very practical goal. our engineering colleagues aremore wired to do that sort of thing; they helpin this regard.

but even they are mostly drivenby their inherent intellectual interests, whichmay or may not be aligned with delivering on the goal ofproviding the new discovery or technology to the patient. and that is going to requireeither a very significant shift in our priorities asfaculty and/or our ability to create capabilities beyondour faculty laboratories. and that could be within thewalls of the koch institute, a group of individuals whosejob it is to do that in

collaboration with our facultyand our students and our postdocs, or something outsideof the koch institute which has that as its mission. some adjunct entity which isabout the development of those concepts and technologiesfor their use in people. those could be spin outcompanies on one level, and we will do that, or there couldbe something that's sort of quasi affiliated with thekoch institute that interviewer: completelyunchartered territory.

jacks: not completelyunchartered, but challenging to make happen in an academicinstitution. this is not typically done. it's not unprecedented, andcertainly the spin out company concept is by no meansunprecedented. but the very directed, sort ofproduct-oriented nature of the research is less familiar toan academic enterprise. interviewer: yeah, it'smuch more of an industry type of goal.

tyler jacks: exactly. it's bringing university-basedresearch and industry r&d closer together. and there are lots of ways ofdoing it: spin out companies, interactions with existingcompanies, or building a workforce within or withoutthat has that as its primary focus. interviewer: yeah, explainedthat way, i can understand why there'd be more resistance,perhaps, in an academic

environment which at somemoments is sort of you know, holding up a crossto industry. jacks: yeah, that's true. there's the concern that youdon't want to cross over too much to the sort of, for-profitnature of things, that we have to do our pureunadulterated research for research's sake. but for me it's time to begintranslating all of that much more aggressively, forme personally.

and i would like to see developto an even greater degree, because it's alreadytrue, at one level it's already true amongst my facultycolleagues, i'd like to see that attitude permeatethrough all of our laboratories and very possiblylead to the generation of a new capability that allows usto do that even better. interviewer: in your own workyou've had some experiences working with outside companiesand consulting and advising them.

do you feel that adds to yourwork as a researcher? how do you bring back thatexperience and how does it benefit mit? jacks: well, i think it canbenefit mit in many different ways to have interactionswith industry. one, financially; if we licenseour discoveries to companies, mit benefitsdirectly. if we were to start a companyand there were some sort of royalty payment to mit based onthat, or some ongoing even

equity position, that canbenefit mit directly. but i think also theinteractions benefit mit. we do, and will do more, haveinteractions with companies where, for example, drugs thatare being developed in companies can be tested in thesystems that we have in our laboratories that the companiesdon't have. and those might be cell-basedsystems or whole animal systems. and by having the relationshipswith the

companies you know reallywhat's happening at the cutting edge, what's the hottestthing in the pipeline, and thereby have a greaterpossibility of gaining access to that very preciousmaterial. not easy to do, by the way. but it does enhanceone's ability. and mit is very good, i wouldsay uniquely good, at promoting industrialrelations. you mentioned earlier holdingthe cross up.

that cross exists, but there'sa much bigger cross at most institutions. mit is very comfortableinteracting with companies. there's a long history ofsuch interactions in many different forms. and i think that's actually veryimportant, because there are only so many things thatwe can do in our labs. there's only so many thingsthat we can do with government funding.

interactions with companies canallow us to do many more things, and especially many morethings that are directly applicable to patients. interviewer: do you haveanything to talk about in terms of the strengths you seeto your school or your department, in particular? jacks: i think that-- you know, i'm part of thedepartment of biology, and part of the school of science--and i would say there are

great strengths inboth respects. mit as a academic institution,as a research university, is universally excellent. we have the best colleagues ina broad range of disciplines. so in the school of science,for example, we interact extensively with members of thedepartment of chemistry, who are world class. with members of the departmentof physics, this has directly benefitedour research through

collaborative projects. so being here has allowed me toaccess, first hand, some of the world's best people, in arange of topics, in the school of science. and likewise, the departmentof biology. we have among the best-- you canlook at the rankings; it's one, two, or three, dependingon which ones you read --programs in biology. which means we have anoutstanding group of faculty,

and we get the best studentsin the country. and mit has investedsignificantly in the biological sciences overthe last 20, 30 years. there are multiple units now inthe department of biology. the main building, which is alsoa koch building, by the way, has 25 to 30 outstandinginvestigators who look at many different aspects of thebiological problem, many of whom we interact with. many of whom are members,actually, of the koch

institute as extramuralmembers. the whitehead institute:outstanding. the broad institute: genomicsand post genomic research. the mcgovern institute,the picower institute. these are all extremely highpowered research institutes that have terrific faculty,terrific students. and with that atmosphere ofinteraction and opportunities for collaboration, itenriches all of us. so in my field there's nothinglike this, and if we think

about that building that we'rebuilding, it's going to sit right in the middleof all of it. so we are at the epicenter ofthis great investment in biomedical research here. interviewer: you know, onethought i just had as you were saying that is, since there'sso many excellent centers of research, does that fosterin any way a kind of competitive spirit? interviewer: you knowwhat i mean.

tyler jacks: yeah, i think onecan never get away from competition. i think there's always a goalto strive to be better and better recognized. i think there probably isthat at some level. you know, we invest a lot inwhat we're building and we want to see it succeed. i don't think we want to see itsucceed to the detriment of anybody else, but we do wantto see it succeed.

and we want to grab someof the attention. and there's a lot of attentionaround here; there's a lot of things that demand attentionaround here. so i think there is something tothat, but i don't think it in any way inhibits themotivation or opportunity for interaction. so there are people in all thoseplaces that i've just mentioned with whom wecollaborate and interact-- and when i say we i don't meanjust my laboratory --and those

are always encouraged andalways supported. so in our institution there isno doubt that the whole is greater than the sumof its parts. and that's not true withevery institution. interviewer: yeah, when i wasthinking about the competitive spirit, i was thinking that itwould be an enhancement. jacks: yeah, i mean you can takethat statement two ways. i think competitionis always good. i actually make this point aboutresearch-- this is a bit

off the topic, but i'lljust mention it --sometimes people complain. cancer philanthropists or donorssometimes worry that we're competitive, that twoinvestigators working on a common problem aren't sharingtheir ideas more, that they're competing with each other,that they're keeping information to themselves. and it's easy to understand whysomeone might be concerned about that, but the fact of thematter is that competition

is a good thing. competition gets youthere faster. it motivates youto work harder. and so i think that in thatsense, competition is always positive, or most of thetime is positive. in terms of the competitionamongst the different institutions, i think we're allpushing to be very, very good and excellent. but also you could say that wehave a collective goal, which

is to be together likeno other place. and i think we're succeedingin that. interviewer: we've coveredmost of the things that i have here. are there other things thatyou'd like to stay? cancer research or aboutmit or about the students or faculty? jacks: yeah, i mean i thinkwe've touched on most of the important points.

i think mit is a rare place forwhat it's done and what it can do, and i think it's theproduct of all the things that we've talked about: from thestudents to the president of the university, to the 1,000faculty in the different institutes that are componentparts of this institution. the atmosphere around here isvery much about doing new things, developing newdirections, and turning our ideas into ways or thingsthat benefit the world. and i think that's an excitingplace to be.

so i've been connected to thisuniversity since i was a kid, i am extremely proud to be amember of this community, i have tremendous hope for whatthe koch institute is going to do for mit and for cancerresearch, so i'm thrilled to be here. interviewer: you're kind of alifer in a different way. jacks: yeah, i might be alifer in the other way. who knows? interviewer: anything else?

jacks: no, i thinkwe've covered it. interviewer: ok.