Stuart Schreiber

Stuart Schreiber is known as a pioneer of chemical biology and chemical genetics, a discipline that uses small molecules to modulate protein function and study biological pathways. He has also completed landmark total syntheses of complex natural products, including FK506 (tacrolimus) and rapamycin.

Schreiber has been a professor at Harvard University and a founding core member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, launched in 2004. He has also co-founded several biotechnology companies, including Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Ariad Pharmaceuticals.

Schreiber's total synthesis of FK506 (tacrolimus), an immunosuppressive natural product, was one of his early landmark achievements. He used synthetic analogs of FK506 to study protein function—specifically the immunophilin FKBP—helping to establish chemical genetics as a recognized discipline alongside traditional genetics.

Schreiber was a founding core member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and co-founded its Chemical Biology Program. The institute, formally launched in 2004, brought together chemists and biologists to use small-molecule probes for understanding disease mechanisms.