$3b drive to end diseases apt to tap Boston area's talent


It set the Longwood Medical Area and Kendall Square abuzz last week: not a medical breakthrough or the latest big-money biotech deal, but the audacious announcement by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan, his Quincy-bred wife, that they would commit $3 billion to the bold goal of beating all diseases into submission by the end of the century. Like Bill and Melinda Gates before them, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, as the couple's philanthropic organization is known, will bolster the tens of billions of dollars spent each year by the federal government on life sciences, a field in which the Boston region's universities, hospitals, research institutes, and biotech companies are second to none.



from Biotech News