The Institute for Systems Biology, a nonprofit research institute, was founded in 2000 with the mission of transforming biological and medical research by creating and using systems approaches to unravel the workings of complex biological systems. The Institute’s ultimate goal is to enhance people’s lives by using the science of systems biology to predict, prevent, and cure disease. Just as growing scientific knowledge helped eradicate smallpox, the bubonic plague, and polio, a greater understanding of how the body works will contribute to the battle against such modern plagues as cancer, AIDS, and diabetes.

ISB’s approach is to use model systems, such as yeast and halobacterium, to learn how to practice systems biology, and then to apply systems approaches to develop an understanding of central issues in medical science—the functioning of the immune system, for instance. These biological challenges are driving the development of new technologies, such as nanotechnology and microfluidics, that will allow us to interrogate the informational contents of single cells, as well as better computational and mathematical techniques for analyzing the data. Researchers at ISB work at the nexus of biology, technology, and computation: biological questions, such as the need to know how a particular type of cell works, drive the development of technologies for making new and better measurements. These measurements, in turn, require the development of new computational and mathematical tools, which are then harnessed to investigate the original biological questions and raise additional ones.

ISB’s founders—Leroy Hood, a world-renowned immunologist and technologist; Alan Aderem, a leading immunologist; and Ruedi Aebersold, a cutting-edge protein chemist—took as a central premise that new ideas require new organizational structures to thrive. Just as we do not shape microscopes to look like telescopes or insist that surgeons learn from two-dimensional diagrams of the body when three-dimensional models are more effective, the founders of ISB realized that the new science of systems biology needed a new research structure. Traditional universities are too rigidly departmentalized for a field that integrates many disciplines and too hesitant about transforming their findings into products. Even traditional corporations are too constrained by organizational processes and boundaries and too focused on quarterly profits.

To build a research institute suited to the challenges of systems biology, ISB’s founders stressed collaboration across disciplines and organizations. In just five years, ISB has grown to more than 170 staff members, including eleven faculty members and laboratory groups. The institute includes 18 specialists in computational biology, 21 specialists in software and database development, 81 biologists, and 41 technologists trained in such diverse fields as biology, physics, chemistry, engineering, computing, mathematics, medicine, immunology, biochemistry, and genetics. All these professionals are backed by an extensive array of academic and industrial partners. The Institute’s 65,000-square-foot facility in the Puget Sound region enables frequent collaboration with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington. Already, teams at ISB are producing pioneering papers in many scientific fields, including genomics, proteomics, and systems biology, and are applying these fields to medicine and other sciences.