Researchers have unravelled much of the basic molecular biology of cancer and, aided by the outpouring of knowledge that the Human Genome Project has yielded over the past ten years, they have come to understand how the disease progresses.

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But that has changed in a flurry of basic biology findings.

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Harvard Professor Mark Fishman , who will leave his academic perch to run Novartis' Cambridge-based laboratory, believes that in the future most biological research will be possible both in drug companies and in academia, but some sliver of basic biology will still need to be done solely in academia.

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The International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM) draws hundreds of experiments made from basic biology toolkits from undergraduates all over the world.

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