The Weizmann Institute of Science has received donations totaling $120 million from private donations and philanthropic foundations for the establishment of the Nancy and Stephen Grand Israel National Center for Personalized Medicine. This amount includes a $50 million donation from Nancy and Stephen Grand of San Francisco through the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science (ACWIS).
The new center will serve Israel’s entire life sciences and biomedical research community, including academic scientists, MDs working in hospital research labs and researchers in the biomedical industry. The center will aim to realize a vision of medicine in which treatments will be prescribed not only for a particular disease, but according to each individual’s unique profile. Personalized medicine has the potential, for example, to tailor drugs and treatments for each patient based on his or her genetic makeup, so as to attain the best possible outcome with the fewest side effects.
Among the existing technologies that will serve the Center’s researchers are the high-throughput systems that enable the analysis of thousands of genes, proteins or potential drug interactions in a short time.
Weizmann Institute president Prof. Daniel Zajfman said, “Stephen and Nancy Grand’s extraordinary gift, together with those already received from the Center’s supporters, is a rare example of the Institute’s friends coming together to achieve a vision that will profoundly influence the future of biomedical research. Because the Center serves the entire Israeli research community, the effects of the studies conducted within its walls will be felt all over the country and well beyond its borders.”
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 12, 2013
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