A Donation of $100 Million to Promote Cancer Research

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BlankSeptember 22, 2006

A Donation of $100 Million to Promote Cancer Research

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

The Starr Foundation, one of the country’s largest philanthropies, pledged $100

million yesterday to cancer research involving collaboration among four

institutions in New York and one in Massachusetts.

The gift will go to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Rockefeller

University and Weill Cornell Medical College, all within a few blocks of each

other on the Upper East Side of Manhattan; Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long

Island; and the Broad Institute, a research center created by Harvard and M.I.T.

Leaders of those research centers said private gifts are especially important

now, as federal grants for medical research decline. Lander, director of

the Broad Institute, said young scientists “are getting the message from federal

funding that they should hunker down and not be too ambitious.”

The Starr Foundation and the five institutions will form a committee to review

research proposals from scientists at the institutions and decide how to award

the money, which the foundation said would be distributed over five years.

So far, the only guidelines are that each project must investigate cancer, and

each one must involve scientists from at least two of the five research centers.

Officials said the institutions would hold a workshop in November for their

scientists to meet and compare ideas.

Starr has taken a similar approach to some past gifts; last year, it gave $50

million for a collaborative stem-cell research effort by Cornell, Rockefeller

and Sloan-Kettering.

The foundation has historically concentrated its giving in New York City,

emphasizing education, medicine, culture and services for the poor.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/nyregion/22cancer.html?pagewanted=print