Harvard-, MIT-Affiliated Broad Institute Receives $400 Million Gift

The Broad Institute, the Kendall Square-based genomic powerhouse that is affiliated with both Harvard and MIT, will receive a $400 million gift from founding benefactors Eli and Edythe L. Broad, according to several professors affiliated with the institute.

The gift, which would dwarf any donation given to either university, would enable the institute to create its own endowment, something that might allow it to become independent of the two schools.

The funds will be invested with a goal of turning the $400 million into a $1 billion endowment, and it has not yet been determined who will invest the funds.

News of the gift was first reported by an article on XConomy, a Web site devoted to technology news.

The Broads, who made their fortune in Southern California real estate, have already donated $200 million to the institute in two $100 million chunks—the first in 2003 and the second in 2005.

In March 2007, the Broad Institute reeled in a third $100 million gift, this one from the Stanley Medical Research Institute, to create a new center to study psychiatric disease, a move that backers said would jump-start the search for the genetic basis of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The Stanley Institute gift was the largest ever given for psychiatric disease research.

The $400 million donation from the Broads will be announced Thursday at a press conference that will feature Mass. Gov. Deval L. Patrick '78, as well as both Harvard President Drew G. Faust and MIT President Susan Hockfield.

Patrick has made bolstering the Massachusetts life sciences industry a hallmark of his governorship. One of the chief accomplishments of his first two years in office was the passage of an act that would invest $1 billion in stem cell and other biological research over the next decade.

At the same time, Harvard has laid plans to stake much of its future growth on biomedical research, which will be the centerpiece of the University's new $1 billion campus in Allston.

—Paras D. Bhayani contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Check TheCrimson.com for more updates regarding tomorrow's press conference as well as continuing coverage on what the gift means for the future of the Broad Institute.