Penn Medicine received a $50 million gift to advance scientific research and discoveries.
The donation came from Stanley Middleman, the CEO and founder of a national mortgage lender. It will establish the Middleman Fund and rename Penn Medicine’s 3600 Civic Center Blvd. building the Middleman Center.
Middleman, who recently joined Penn Medicine’s Corporate Council as an advisor, wrote in the press release that he was “proud” to support the “extraordinary work” happening on campus.
He hopes that the fund will “fuel the development of lifesaving therapies” and new approaches to treating patients and that the Middleman Center will “bring together the people and ideas to make those breakthroughs possible.”
Penn Medicine did not immediately disclose the dollar amount of the gift. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that it totaled $50 million.
The Middleman Center — which includes wet labs, offices, and other research facilities — will bring together infectious disease research programs. That includes the Colton Center for Autoimmunity at Penn, the High-Throughput Institute for Discovery, as well as experts from the Penn Center for Innovation and the Penn Center for Health Care Transformation and Innovation.
The new center will also be equipped with advanced technologies, including the Holman Lab, a specialized biosafety facility.
Penn President Larry Jameson remarked that the Middleman Fund would extend beyond Penn Medicine and bring together people from across the University, creating an “extraordinary” environment for discovery that sees ideas all the way through to implementation.
The Fund follows in the footsteps of similar philanthropic investments at Penn that supported several scientific breakthroughs, most prominently CAR T-cell therapy and foundational mRNA research.
“Investing in our most promising research has long been Penn Medicine’s blueprint,” Perelman School of Medicine Dean and Executive Vice President of the University of Pennsylvania for the Health System Jonathan Epstein wrote.
“The Middleman Fund will allow Penn Medicine to identify and support today’s ideas that can become the lifesaving treatments of tomorrow,” he added.
Staff reporter Sameeksha Panda covers science and health and can be reached at panda@thedp.com. At Penn, she studies chemistry.
