“We must acknowledge...that the most important, indeed, the only, thing we have to offer our students is ourselves. Everything else they can read in a book or discover independently.”
Daniel C. Tosteson, MD, dean for faculty of medicine from 1977-1997, Harvard Medical School
From New England Journal of Medicine 1979
Training Pioneers in Therapeutic Sciences
The Therapeutics Graduate Program focuses on pharmacology, toxicology and drug discovery, emphasizing research in both HMS labs and in real-world internships. Our goal is to provide students with the intellectual tool kit and practical skills necessary to be productive researchers in therapeutics discovery throughout the workforce.
The certificate program offers rigorous, multidisciplinary training relevant to identifying and developing novel therapeutics, understanding and investigating mechanisms of drug action, analyzing the reasons for clinical failures, and developing new compounds and applying them in preclinical and clinical studies to improve the treatment of disease.
This program will provide students with all the tools and skills necessary for these aims, including quantitative skills and modern cutting-edge techniques. This involves elucidating and understanding biological pathways and therapeutic mechanisms, understanding adverse effects to limit toxicity, identifying novel therapeutic targets, and characterizing the pharmacologic profiles (pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics) of new compounds. Students will understand the social implications and impact of these activities, and we therefore aim to link this training to industrial, clinical, and regulatory activities and to encourage students to consider their studies in a society-wide context.
Jennifer Jiang
Program: Systems, Synthetic & Quant. Biology
Hometown: Vancouver, BC, Canada
PI(s): Phil Cole
I’m a PhD student in the Systems, Synthetic, and Quantitative Biology program working in Phil Cole’s lab, where I sit at the intersection of protein design, biochemistry, and epigenetics. I use computational and experimental protein engineering to build tools that probe chromatin states. Chromatin markers, like histone post-translational modifications, are important therapeutic targets, and my work aims to create biosensors that can feed into target discovery, drug screening, and mechanistic studies.
I have broad interests, and TGP has been a warm, supportive community as I explore different career paths in science. Outside the lab, I’m active in science communication and consulting: I’ve given public lectures on biology, tell biotech stories as a podcast host and writer, and lead pro bono consulting projects for companies. I’ve also captained the Harvard women’s table tennis team and enjoy tennis and skiing. Lately, I’m on a personal mission to find the best ramen, matcha, and lobster roll spots in Boston.
