Omar Abudayyeh
The Abudayyeh-Gootenberg lab, based at the Mass General Brigham Gene and Cell Therapy Institute, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Harvard Medical School, is dedicated to exploring programmable systems in biology for the development of molecular tools, diagnostics, and therapeutics. Leveraging insights from natural biological systems, mechanism-inspired design, and machine learning-driven engineering, these tools provide an unprecedented level of control over genomes, transcriptomes, and cells. The lab applies these innovative methods to address and comprehend unresolved challenges in areas such as genetic diseases, cancer, aging, and sustainability.
Next-Generation Programmable Medicines: The lab is pioneering the development of programmable biomedical tools, focusing on RNA guided molecular systems for genome and cellular engineering, precision control systems for next-generation RNA therapeutics, and novel delivery technologies to achieve tissue-specific delivery of genetic medicines. This research avenue aims to catalyze the next wave of therapeutic modalities for a spectrum of genetic pathologies and oncological conditions that currently lack effective treatments.
Designing biology with Artificial Intelligence: Employing computational models and machine learning approaches, the lab seeks to build novel models that can 1) enable general protein design and 2) cell prediction. In the protein design space, large language models currently cannot predict protein function well and using a combination of novel data and ML frameworks, the lab is developing models capable of highly accurate and scalable protein engineering. Separately, while single-cell RNA sequencing has produced unprecedented amounts of RNA sequencing data, cell models cannot make accurate predictions about cellular behavior. Leveraging novel AI frameworks and new single cell data, we are pioneering new efforts to model and predict cellular behavior in response to diverse perturbations and accomplish a true “virtual cell”.
Universal Anti-Aging Interventions: To better understand universal aging mechanisms, the lab applies a system biology and functional genomics approach, utilizing genome-wide perturbation screens coupled with high-throughput single-cell analytics to delineate the molecular determinants of cellular aging. We seek to uncover both tissue-specific and pan-cellular mechanisms that drive rejuvenation and to use these insights to design novel anti-aging interventions that can partially reprogram diverse cell types.
Climate change and sustainability: Our lab uses artificial intelligence and cutting-edge protein engineering to tackle climate change and sustainability problems. Through our work, we're developing novel enzyme and protein-based solutions in areas such as manufacturing, biomaterials, decarbonization, and more to drive impactful advances in sustainability and decrease the effects of climate change.
Through these diverse research themes, the Abudayyeh-Gootenberg lab is building novel molecular technologies to better understand human disease and longevity and advance the frontier of precision medicine and synthetic biology.