Los Angeles philanthropists, Eli and Edythe Broad, are donating an additional $400 million to the Cambridge, MA research center that bears their name - setting a new record for gifts for biomedical research in academia.

The Broads initially invested $100 million in 2003 as a way to test the institute’s new approach to biomedical research. By 2005, the Broad Institute had already made significant accomplishments and progress, and the Broads’ invested a second $100 million. The Broads’ recent $400 million commitment - bringing the total to $600 million - makes it the largest to support biomedical research at a university anywhere in the world.

The Broad Institute launched in 2004 as a joint project of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University - including the Harvard affiliated hospitals. The institute was founded to bring together researchers across these institutions to use genomics to understand diseases and disorders and to develop new treatments. The Broad's endowment will allow the Institute to transition to a permanent, non-profit 510(c)(3) organization with both Harvard and MIT still at the heart of it, continuing to help govern the institute.

“Of all of our philanthropy, the Broad Institute has been the investment that has yielded the greatest returns,” said Eli Broad, founder of The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. “This truly is a new way of doing science, and the Institute’s unique collaborative model for scientific research has resulted in remarkable accomplishments in a very short period of time. Although this is a large gift – the largest that we have ever made – it is only a fraction of what will be needed to unlock the enormous promise of biomedical research at MIT and Harvard. We are counting on others to step forward as partners in the next phase of this grand experiment. We are convinced that the genomics and biomedical work being conducted here by the world’s best and brightest scientists will ultimately lead to the cure and even the prevention of diseases.”

“Eli and Edythe Broad are true visionaries,” said Eric Lander, founding director of the Broad Institute. “They made an enormous bet in 2004. Their bet has paid off more handsomely than any of us imagined. It has unleashed the creative potential of a remarkable community of scientists. And, it has defined a new model for how scientists and institutions can work together.”

Read more from the official announcement.