Researchers get $100m to study cancer genetics

Somebody to do some business with...

A New York philanthropy is giving $100 million to the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard and four New York research centers to study the genetics of cancer, part of the push to transform the treatment of the disease by understanding its genetic makeup.

``There is just an extraordinary opportunity in cancer research right now," said Eric Lander, director of the Broad Institute, during a press conference yesterday announcing the award. ``The clinical and biological insights of the last decade and a half have really pointed us to where the problems are."

Executives at The Starr Foundation, established in 1955 by businessman Cornelius Vander Starr, said their only restriction for the money is that the five entities collaborate on projects, because they believe that scientists will find cures faster than if they work only with colleagues at their own institutions.

The other members of the consortium are Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, The Rockefeller University, and Weill Medical College of Cornell University.

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