The Johns Hopkins Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences was created in December 2000 to form a cohesive infrastructure for the School of Medicine's eight basic science departments.

Now the IBBS, under the leadership of Stephen Desiderio, M.D., Ph.D., also is identifying and forming interdisciplinary research programs in emerging and promising fields and setting goals for hiring new faculty in the basic sciences. Through the IBBS, Johns Hopkins is once again setting the example for how science is done.

The IBBS links the existing departments of Biological Chemistry, Biomedical Engineering, Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry, Molecular Biology and Genetics, Molecular Cell Biology, Neuroscience, Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences and Physiology in the Basic Science quadrangle on Hopkins' medical campus in East Baltimore.

A block away in the new research building at Broadway and Madison is IBBS's first interdisciplinary research program, the High Throughput Biology Center, or HiT Center. With roughly 20,000 square feet, the HiT Center includes faculty laboratories that offer fee-for-service and research collaborations in proteomics; microarrays; sequencing and synthesis of DNA, peptides and proteins; and screening of multiple large compound libraries. In addition to its space in the Broadway Research Building, IBBS will have office and laboratory space in the new Basic Science Building planned for the corner of Madison Avenue and Washington Street. Just north of these research buildings, Baltimore City has planned a biotech park.