Nancy Andrews, MD, PhD, is the Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of Boston Children’s Hospital.

Dr. Andrews’ academic honors include election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine. She is a past president of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, and past Chair of the Board of Directors of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. She is also a member of the MIT Corporation, the Institute’s board of trustees.

To say that Dr. Andrews’ has some authority on the matter of scientific discovery and leadership would be an understatement.

On December 4, 2024, the MIT community, including Dr. Andrews, gathered to launch the MIT’s Health and Life Sciences (HEALS) Initiative that supports the convergence of world-class expertise across MIT and industry leaders in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and hospitals (including Boston Children’s Hospital)—all to catalyze discovery, innovation, and impact for human health.

Dr. Andrews tells us more about her MIT journey and the importance of fundamental research as the root of advancing the MIT HEALS mission.

Your career has exemplified the interface between basic science and clinical advancement and it started with obtaining your PhD in Biology from MIT. How did that foundation influence your path as a leader?

I knew I wanted to be a scientist helping to solving clinical problems from the time I arrived in Boston as a medical student. MIT Biology gave me the opportunity to learn how to do rigorous, fundamental research that had the potential to advance medicine. It was unusual for Harvard MD/PhD students to do their dissertation research at MIT then, but I was fascinated by the breadth and importance of work at the MIT Cancer Center (a precursor to the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research) and in my final year, at the new Whitehead Institute, founded by my PhD advisor, David Baltimore.

During my training I flipped back and forth between clinical medicine and science. Despite overlapping content, they are very different fields and it was disorienting at first. But I learned to be facile in changing mindset. In my early years on the faculty of Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, I established my own research lab and spent 15 to 20 percent of my time seeing children with hematology and oncology problems. As I became more senior, my clinical work became focused, aligning very closely with work in my laboratory. We were interested in hereditary disorders of iron balance, and many of my clinic patients had unusual iron disorders. It was my job to understand what was wrong and address their clinical issues, but it was also an opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of iron biology. The insights gleaned from the clinic complemented our work in the lab and helped us work out details of mammalian iron transport, its regulation, and its perturbation in disease. At the time I was one of only four women physician-scientists who were Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigators, and I was grateful for HHMI’s generous support of our research.

My first significant leadership role also mixed science and medicine. At the end of 1999, I became Director of the Harvard-MIT MD/PhD Program, overseeing the education of students who, like me, wanted to have a deep understanding of both fields. I knew the weaknesses of the program because I was an alumna, and I worked with faculty colleagues to make it stronger. Less than four years later, I was tapped to become Dean for Basic Sciences and Graduate Studies at Harvard Medical School, with oversight responsibility for the MD/PhD Program, the Harvard/MIT Health Sciences and Technology (HST) Program, Harvard’s medical sciences graduate programs and the basic science departments based on medical school quadrangle. It was a very fulfilling role, which took advantage of all the training I’d had.

In 2007, my career took a very sharp turn, and I moved to North Carolina to become Dean of the Duke University School of Medicine. Once again, my experiences in both medicine and science were valuable. I no longer saw patients, but I continued to have a research laboratory for almost my entire deanship. I became involved in national leadership roles that took advantage of my dual expertise, serving as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Burroughs Wellcome Foundation, on the governing Council of the National Academy of Medicine, as Chair of the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and, most relevant here, as a member of the MIT Corporation. I also joined the boards of Novartis, Charles River Laboratories, and Maze Therapeutics. When I stepped down as dean, I had a portfolio of these responsibilities and a few others, which drew upon and amplified my physician-scientist expertise.

Just over three years ago I returned to my professional roots, to serve as Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital, overseeing a large and complex research enterprise. Boston Children’s has many physician-scientists on its faculty, in addition to PhD scientists devoted to medical research. My fluency in both medicine and science is a great asset, and I bring deep experience from my prior leadership roles.

It’s hard to find a medical advance that is not rooted in fundamental science – I can’t think of one.

As a MD-PhD you have a unique lens on the bench-to-bedside interface, please talk a bit about this dynamic and the importance of fundamental scientific research as a cornerstone of the discoveries that will lead to the health solutions of tomorrow.

It’s hard to find a medical advance that is not rooted in fundamental science – I can’t think of one. It’s not necessary to have both an MD and a PhD to make important contributions, but dual degree training provides a special perspective. Physician-scientists, whether or not they have PhDs, make connections that non-physicians may not see. They know what questions are clinically interesting and important and may address those questions in their work. But they also make connections between very basic findings and disease processes. For me, that was the most fun part. Medical research thrives when people bring diverse perspectives to solve problems, and physician-scientists often provide the links between those perspectives.

How can the MIT Health and Life Sciences initiative pave the way for the next generation of scientists who will lead in this space?

MIT offers an incredible intellectual landscape for people interested in advancing human health. Every part of MIT is, potentially, quite relevant, and the HEALS initiative builds on the MIT community’s openness and attraction to important, practical problems. There have been strong connections between MIT and Boston area hospitals for decades and HEALS amplifies them in a new and exciting way.

One of the inaugural projects of this initiative features a partnership with Boston Children’s Hospital. How does basic science interface with clinical practice at Boston Children’s?

Diseases of childhood offer unique insights into human biology because many medical problems that occur early in life result either from genetic predisposition or infectious diseases. That was part of what attracted me to pediatrics to begin with. It means that we have a better chance of understanding how diseases originate and better tools for developing potent therapies. Because research has been a big part of who we are for decades, Boston Children’s is a powerhouse for fundamental research and its translation, and a prime setting for clinical trials. We can do a lot on our own, but MIT’s strengths complement ours beautifully, and we can do so much more together.

What opportunities do you see on the horizon for more partnerships between HEALS and hospitals?

I think the key will be the people involved. Getting people with different perspectives, different training, different interests together in new ways, to do what MIT does so well – to go after the tough, important problems. Boston Children’s is pretty good at that too – both clinically and in our labs – and we make great partners.

As a donor to the Department of Biology at MIT, what are your hopes for the future of scientific research and its impact on our world?

I’ve tended to give for two causes. First, because I benefitted from an emergency fund for graduate students when I was a student and needed money unexpectedly, I’ve repaid that fund many times over. And my other giving has almost always been unrestricted. As a long-time administrator, I know how valuable unrestricted gifts are for institutions and their departments, and I fully trust MIT to use my money wisely, for worthwhile purposes. That’s even more important right now, when there’s tremendous uncertainty about funding for biomedical research in the United States.