“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.
Ashton Tillett
Program: Biological & Biomedical Sciences
Hometown: Crooked Tree Village, Belize
PI(s): Rotating
I have always been interested in how small molecular changes can reshape entire biological systems. Working with patient-derived neurons and seeing how single nucleotide variants influence neural circuits made me realize that this is the type of problem I want to work on. I hope to develop new genome engineering tools, model neurodevelopmental disorders and eventually explore ways to repair pathogenic mutations in the brain.
I hope to lead my own research group focused on neurogenetics and therapeutic development. After graduate school, I plan to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship that will challenge me scientifically and help bring new strategies closer to the clinic.
I enjoy trying new foods and recreating Belizean dishes that remind me of home. I am a cat dad to two Ragdolls who bring a lot of personality to my apartment. When I am not in the lab, I am usually visiting new coffee shops, watching fantasy shows or planning my next hike.
