These important questions lack simple answers, but they are worth asking: the medical import of HHMI research is central to our charter and the work of many investigators. Visit the online Bulletin to hear Charles Sawyers, an HHMI investigator at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, discuss translational research and a promising treatment for prostate cancer. Indeed, the impact of research that calls on the specific strengths of academic and pharmaceutical industry scientists received new attention earlier this fall when Sawyers and HHMI colleague Brian Druker at the Oregon Health Sciences University shared the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award with Nicholas B. Lydon, formerly of Novartis, for the successful identification of a targeted therapy for leukemia.

HHMI is large and well established, but we are no scientific monolith. Like the cell membrane—the subject of a two-part series that starts in this issue of the Bulletin—the boundaries of the Institute are regulated but highly porous; we benefit mightily from a constant flow of people and ideas. Former investigators hold major leadership roles in government, academia, and pharmaceutical research, the most notable being Francis Collins, the new director of the National Institutes of Health. We're happy to see our alumni succeed. And we like to think that they carry an appreciation for their HHMI experience—specifically, the value of giving researchers freedom to pursue challenging biological questions—into their new environments.

HHMI gains from collaboration and interchange, as witnessed by our expanded support for postdoctoral scientists in collaboration with four highly regarded organizations. I look forward to finding other opportunities to develop new programs with partners who demonstrate similar philosophical goals and commitment to excellence, thereby expanding the reach, scale, and sophistication of any endeavor. We have much to learn from others: after all, the poet also labors to explain the world in all its glorious complexity.

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