The Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia has received a $16.3 million anonymous donation for a neuroscience research initiative, one of the largest donations received by the medical school, according to a press statement.
The neuroscience of behavior initiative led by Dr. Brian Strom, the chair and professor of biostatistics and epidemiology, will focus on addiction, depressive disorders and neurodegenerative disease in an interdisciplinary effort to develop new science and to translate existing science into improved clinical care for patients, the statement said.
Strom said: “This gift represents an enormous opportunity and will enable us to apply ideas emerging in the study of effective interventions and treatments in a way that will benefit not only our patients, but the community as well.”
The donation was one of the three largest individual contributions received by the university for medical research in the past 10 years, a spokeswoman for the university said.
Nationally, it represents the largest donation for medical research in 2011. Only three individual donations for medical research topped the $1 million mark, said the spokeswoman citing numbers from the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The University of Louisville School of Medicine in Kentucky received $4 million. The City of Hope cancer research center received a $3 million pledge from an anonymous donor to strengthen collaborations with the California Institute of Technology to develop innovative biomedical research projects. University Hospitals Case Western Medical Center in Cleveland received $2 million.
