Taking risks on research industry won’t do

In January, however, Ali joined the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, attracted back to academia by its cross-disciplinary approach. The institute works to bridge the gap between promising basic research advances and the robotic technologies, drugs, novel building materials, or medical devices that change the world.

Ali is currently working with a Harvard bioengineering professor, David Mooney, and Dr. Glenn Dranoff of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to move toward a clinical trial of the technology in melanoma patients.

The novel cancer vaccine is a prime example of what the Wyss, a 2-year-old institute founded with a $125 million gift, is trying to do. Using engineering techniques that mimic nature, the institute is set up to push research beyond the typical endpoint in an academic lab — and to do the early-stage work that companies may be reluctant to undertake on a risky new technology.

To do that, the Wyss is bringing together people and ideas from many disciplines, backgrounds, and institutions at its main site in the midst of the bustling Longwood Medical Area in Boston and another site on Harvard’s Cambridge campus.

Of its 240 employees, nearly 30 are members of an “advanced technology team’’ with experience in industry. Collaborations also extend beyond Harvard’s borders, including researchers from the hospitals and academic institutions across the region.

Mike Super, a senior staff scientist, said he joined the Wyss because his experience at biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies had taught him that industry tends to be good at the later-stage development of a drug or product, but not the early-stage research.

Industry is “very risk-averse, so they’re looking to academia to come up with research,’’ Super said.

“We are trying to fill that gap; we’re taking things to prototyping, so we’re not just building it and writing a paper. We’re actually building it and testing it, getting real clinical samples and testing the device out.’’