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Pathway · From a printing press to mRNA

How Cambridge Built Biotech

The world’s densest life-sciences cluster wasn’t inevitable — it was a series of choices, made on this side of the river. Trace the line from a 17th-century inoculation to a vaccine designed in two days.

Stops
7
Distance
5.1 mi
On foot
103 min walking
From
The Inoculation Experiment (1721) → The Vaccine Designed in Two Days (2020)
  1. 1
    Historical event · 1721

    The Inoculation Experiment (1721)

    The 18th-century beginning: an enslaved African’s knowledge, applied across the river in 1721.

  2. 3.2 mi on
    2
    Historical event · 1638

    First Printing Press in British America (1638)

    Cambridge’s founding technology — the press that made it a city of ideas.

  3. 16 min walk on
    3
    Historical event · 1976

    The Recombinant DNA Hearings (1976)

    The most consequential city-council meeting in Cambridge’s 400 years.

  4. 17 min walk on
    4
    Historical event · 1978

    Biogen Founded (1978)

    The first company to arrive under the new biosafety rules.

  5. 4 min walk on
    5
    Kendall Square
    Neighborhood

    Kendall Square

    The square those rules built — now ‘the most innovative square mile on the planet.’

  6. 1 min walk on
    6
    MIT Museum
    Museum / Cultural · 1971

    MIT Museum

    Where the Institute explains its own role in all of it.

  7. 3 min walk on
    7
    Historical event · 2020

    The Vaccine Designed in Two Days (2020)

    The payoff: a vaccine sequenced in two days, in January 2020.