Digging for answers
Aiming for breakthroughs in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes and other major illnesses, MIT and the pharmaceutical firm Pfizer Inc. held a formal groundbreaking on Tuesday morning for a new, multidisciplinary research center to be built on MIT property in the Kendall Square neighborhood.The two-building complex will house Pfizer’s Cardiovascular, Metabolic, and Endocrine Diseases (CVMED) and Neuroscience research units. It will be situated within a couple of blocks of several MIT biomedical centers that conduct research related to Pfizer’s areas of drug development. In remarks at the groundbreaking ceremony, MIT President Susan Hockfield said the complex would “magnify the creative intensity and collaborative spirit” that marks biotechnology research in the MIT area. The prospect of Pfizer and MIT scientists collaborating on research projects, Hockfield added, is an extension of MIT founder William Barton Rogers’ vision of basic research being pursued both for its own sake and for the sake...