LOS ANGELES, July 1 (Xinhua) -- Los Angeles billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad has donated 100 million U.S. dollars to a genomic medicine research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his foundation announced Wednesday.
The payment to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a newly established permanent nonprofit organization, was the first installment of a 400-million-dollar endowment pledged by the Eli and Edyth Broad Foundation to the institute.
"Our goal in funding the Broad Institute is simple: to improve the human condition," Broad said in a statement.
The real estate tycoon said that he and wife Edythe are convinced that scientists at the Broad Institute will identify the genes responsible for disease and will discover cures or completely eliminate diseases altogether.
"We believe that our investment will put the Broad Institute firmly on the path toward this goal," Broad said.
Initially launched in 2004 as a partnership between MIT, Harvard and other institutions, the Broad Institute was established to discover the knowledge buried in the human genome and use it to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to disease, according to foundation spokeswoman Karen Denne.
The Broads announced the 400-million-dollar endowment last September, on top of previous 200 million dollars in commitments to the Broad Institute.
Denne said the Broad Foundation will continue to make installments, with the goal of growing the endowment to 1 billion dollars through investment and additional gifts.
"Just as Eli and Edye are fulfilling their remarkable promise to us, the Broad Institute must now fulfill its promise by empowering creative scientists from across institutions and disciplines to work together to truly transform medicine," said Eric Lander, founding director of the Broad Institute.
The Broad Institute is considered among the world's leading genomic medicine research institutes and has grown to more than 1, 000 scientists working on a variety of projects across biomedicine, Denne said.
