This is a huge donation for the Broad and probably equals all their previous fundraising. I think a lot will ask if it's too much to one institute or too little to solve the problem, but overall I'm very excited. Biology is changing very fast right now, and it's probably the right time for a big new push. Psychiatric disease and brain research is the next big frontier and private funding like this allows places to take risks they otherwise couldn't on grants. The Broad Institute is the best genomics institute by far, albeit a little light on the clinical side. The money will not be wasted on anything hokey. All that said though, there is a large chance that it still won't be enough to solve a very tough set of problems.
I really appreciate that the Broad keeps a lot of attention on basic (or at least, pre-clinical) research. That kind of work is critical to making big discoveries but it's harder to defend for funding in a world where we want to put drugs on shelves. I still want to see drugs on shelves, but starting at the clinic isn't the best way to make discoveries that lead to real therapeutics.
