David R. Liu is the Richard Merkin Professor and Director of the Merkin Institute of Transformative Technologies in Healthcare at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard University, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator.

Liu co-leads the Center for Therapeutic Genetics, which aims to make individualized genetic medicines reproducible, scalable, and sustainable so that more patients with genetic disease can benefit from new, effective treatments.

Liu’s research integrates chemistry and evolution to illuminate biology and enable novel therapeutics. Base editing, prime editing, phage-assisted continuous evolution (PACE), and DNA-templated synthesis are four examples of technologies pioneered in his laboratory. These technologies are used by thousands of laboratories around the world to study and treat diseases. At least 25 clinical trials using base editing or prime editing are underway, with at least 10 trials reporting results to date. These clinical outcomes have yielded medical milestones including the first treatment of a patient with base editing (Alyssa Tapley, who suffered from T-cell leukemia), the first treatment of patients with prime editing (Tracy Atteberry, who suffered from chronic granulomatous disease and was treated with PM-359), the first functional cure for sickle-cell disease using base editing (Branden Baptiste and others treated with BEAM-101), the first clinical in vivo base editing (Alice Thomas and other hypercholesterolemia patients treated with VERVE-101/102), the first correction of a pathogenic mutation in a human (alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency patients treated with BEAM-302), and the first treatment with a customized gene editing medicine (baby K. J. Muldoon, who suffered from a severe urea cycle disorder).

Liu’s lab recently developed a new prime editing strategy that could potentially treat multiple genetic diseases with a single drug, and continues to improve the technology for in vivo therapeutic applications. Liu is the founder or co-founder of several public and private biotechnology and therapeutics companies, including Beam Therapeutics, Prime Medicine, Editas Medicine, Pairwise Plants, nChroma Bio, and Exo Therapeutics.

Liu graduated first in his class at Harvard College in 1994. During his doctoral research at UC Berkeley, Liu initiated the first general effort to expand the genetic code in living cells. He earned his Ph.D. in 1999 and became assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University in the same year. He was promoted to associate professor in 2003 and to full professor in 2005. Liu became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator in 2005 and joined the JASONs, academic science advisors to the US government, in 2009. In 2016, he became a core institute member and vice-chair of the faculty at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and director of the Chemical Biology and Therapeutics Science Program.

Liu has published more than 300 papers and is co-inventor on more than 115 issued U.S. patents. Liu is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the US National Academy of Medicine, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been recognized with distinctions including the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in the Life Sciences, the 2026 Harvey Prize, the 2026 Franklin Institute Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science, the 2025 FNIH Montrone-Seigel Prize in Biomedical Sciences, the 2022 King Faisal Prize in Medicine, and the 2024 Jacob and Louise Gabbay Award. He has earned several university-wide distinctions for teaching at Harvard, including the Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize, the Roslyn Abramson Award, and a Harvard College Professorship. His research accomplishments have earned additional distinctions including the American Chemical Society Award for Creative Invention, the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy Outstanding Achievement Award, the Ian Scott Medal for Excellence in Biological Chemistry Research, the Ronald Breslow Award for Biomimetic Chemistry, the American Chemical Society David Perlman Award, the American Chemical Society Pure Chemistry Award, the Arthur Cope Young Scholar Award, and awards from the Sloan Foundation, Beckman Foundation, NSF CAREER Program, and Searle Scholars Program.

In 2025, Liu was named to the TIME100 Health list of “the 100 individuals who most influenced global health”, and in 2026, he was named to the Washington Post Next 50 (50 people shaping our society), and to the Boston Magazine 150 Most Influential Bostonians. In 2016, 2019, 2020, and 2021, he was named one of the Top 20 Translational Researchers in the world by Nature Biotechnology, and was named one of Nature’s 10 researchers in the world. Liu was named as a leading global thinker by Foreign Policy magazine in 2017, to the STATUS List of 46 leaders in health, medicine, and science by STAT News, and as one of the “Most Influential People in Biopharma in 2023” by Fierce Biotech.

Outside of the lab, Liu pursues a variety of hobbies at the intersection of science and art, including photography around the world, raising large bonsai trees indoors under LED light canopies he designed, creating art from wood, metal, stone, and/or electronic components, and painting.

David R. Liu’s Conflicts of Interest Disclosure

DRL is a co-founder and consultant for Beam Therapeutics, Pairwise Plants, Exo Therapeutics, nChroma Bio. He owns founders’ equity in these companies, receives consultancies from them, and serves on their scientific advisory boards. He is the co-founder of Prime Medicine and owns equity in this company. He also serves as a scientific advisory board member and equity owner of Tevard Biosciences, Insitro, and Genscript Biotech. DRL may receive honoraria and travel reimbursements for some speaking engagements.  He is a co-inventor on patents related to his research, as listed on his CV.  Some of these patents have been licensed to companies including those listed above.  Potential conflicts of interest between his academic activities and his activities with other entities including the companies above are actively disclosed and managed in accordance with the conflict of interest policies of the Broad Institute, Harvard University, and HHMI.