For more than 200 years, discoveries at Harvard Medical School have driven innovations in medicine and the life sciences, leading to breakthroughs in cancer, deafness, and sickle cell disease, as well as new strategies to address health inequities and rising health care costs. Today, HMS’s community spans 12,000 faculty members and 15 affiliated hospitals. HMS scientists unravel disease biology while clinical researchers advance patient care—all propelling medicine forward through collaboration and the relentless exchange of ideas.

Since its founding in 1782, HMS has stood at the forefront of scientific innovation and the advancement of human health. In the 1800s, HMS professor and co-founder Benjamin Waterhouse introduced the smallpox vaccine in the United States. Later that century, HMS helped lead the development of surgical anesthesia. In the early 20th century, Harvard faculty performed the world’s first successful heart valve surgery and invented the iron lung for polio patients. After World War II, HMS researchers transformed organ transplantation, heart surgery, and cancer treatment, continuing a legacy of breakthroughs into the 21st century, even as medical science has become more complex and the path from lab discovery to therapy has grown longer.

A 2018 paper by HMS professor Mark Fishman, MD ’76, and his colleagues traced 28 of the most important drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration between 1985 and 2009 back to their origins. Some 80 percent of these groundbreaking drugs, Fishman and his coauthors found, emerged from basic science research; on average, it took more than 30 years for a basic discovery to result in an FDA-approved drug. Today’s fundamental discovery is tomorrow’s miracle cure.