Tim Springer, professor and billionaire, has donated $210 million towards biomedical research.
Tim Springer is a professor of immunology at Harvard University, and he made an immense fortune as a founding investor in the pharmaceutical company Moderna. He might be the the wealthiest educator in the world, worth approximately $1.9 billion grown from his initial investment of only $5 million.
Springer founded the Institute for Protein Innovation (IPI) in 2017 along with several other scientists, to study the science of antibodies, vaccines, and aging. IPI focuses on providing antibodies and protein-based tools to the scientific community. The nonprofit organization creates synthetic antibodies and proteins (rather than using antibodies acquired from mice and lab animals) and sells them to scientific researchers. As a nonprofit, they focus on making their products available to other nonprofits.
On Wednesday, IPI announced that they have received a large donation from their founder, his wife, and their children. It amounts to just over $210 million dollars.
“I founded IPI on the premise that a foundry for protein tools, and most importantly antibodies, would help scientists make discoveries, and possibly new therapeutics, for years to come; my gift will help realize this vision,” Springer said in a statement. “IPI is my legacy project and recognizes the role that monoclonal antibodies have played in my discovery and basic research.”
IPI’s president and CEO Ken Fasman calls the donation “transformative,” adding that the organization will now “be able to take on more challenging problems in protein science that academia and industry cannot or will not.”
Other philanthropic efforts of Tim Springer include endowed chairs at Harvard Medical School, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Boston Children’s Hospital. He also invests in several bioscience industries, always seeking to advance medical science and our understanding of disease and recovery.
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