Researchers in Roanoke said a $50 million donation to the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC will propel efforts to better understand and treat enigmatic cancers and brain disorders.
That $50 million donation, spread across the next five years, comes from the Red Gates Foundation, a Richmond-based philanthropy. It is equal to the largest donations ever made to Virginia Tech, the school announced Tuesday.
“It’s truly a transformative gift,” said Michael Friedlander, executive director at the research institute. “The amount of money obviously is enormous, and enables us to be more competitive on the national stage in attracting some of the best and brightest researchers in these areas.”
The institute has been a job creator for the Roanoke Valley. Since its launch in 2010 in conjunction with Carilion Clinic, the biomedical institute has grown to employ more than 450 people, including 35 faculty-led research teams.
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Most of the Red Gates donation will go toward recruiting 14 additional researchers and their teams who focus largely on cancer, but also neuro-engineering and computational neuroscience, Virginia Tech said in an announcement.
One out of four Americans will experience a brain disorder in their lifetime, and cancer is currently the second-leading cause of death in the United States, Friedlander said during a phone call Monday.
“Here at Fralin Biomedical Research Institute we already have established a very strong brain research team, so it’s an area we have great strengths and an opportunity to grow,” Friedlander said. “Whereas in the cancer research area … that’s an area we’re newly growing here at Virginia Tech, and we see an opportunity to really substantially grow.”
In addition to adding staff, one-third of the donation money will support six major research projects at the Fralin Institute, including an effort led by associate professor Jennifer Munson to better understand how bodily fluid flow impacts brain cancer development and treatment.
“Fluid flow in the brain is important, you need it because it keeps your neurons working, and it keeps things clean in your brain,” Munson said. “This is going to fund our work so that we can look at how fluid is moving around a patient’s tumor and see if we can predict where those tumor cells might already be, or might go in the future.
“On this particular project, we have about 10 to 12 people working at any time, and that includes all of our groups: med students, medical doctors, and a lot of undergraduate students, both from Virginia Tech and also from Virginia Western Community College and Radford. It’s always a big group effort.”
At Virginia Tech in Roanoke, a lab team has spent most of a decade researching glioblastoma, a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer, using MRI scans to map mathematical models of patients’ brains, Munson said. The newly arrived funding will further their efforts to translate those laboratory findings, advancing their research to prepare for actual clinical uses.
“Our hope is that we can help people have not just more life to live if they’re dealing with this disease, but also a better quality of life, too,” Munson said. “Beyond that, what we find in glioblastoma might translate to other types of cancers in the brain, or other types of diseases, and that’s really thinking 20 or 30 years down the line.”
Another project funded through the donation is a therapeutic approach to reduce side effects of radiation treatment in cancer patients, Friedlander said. Still another project uses machine learning to measure neurochemicals like dopamine, melatonin and serotonin in the brain, to help diagnose and track epilepsy in children.
“Now they’re not yet ready to move into the clinic, but they’re in that translational phase, to get them ready to begin to move into the clinic,” Friedlander said. “These are projects that are ongoing, that are funded normally by grants that we compete for. It’s very competitive.”
The Red Gate Foundation donation is transformational because it enables these Fralin Institute projects to develop more rapidly than if they used the usual grant application process that moves at limited pace and is not guaranteed funding, he said.
This $50 million donation matches two previous record-setting gifts to Virginia Tech. A $50 million donation from the Fralin family in 2018 led to the Roanoke-based biomedical research institute’s naming, and Boeing committed $50 million in 2021 to jump-start the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus’ creation in Alexandria, set to open next fall.
The Red Gate Foundation was formed in 2020 from the estate of Hunter Goodwin. His parents, Alice and Bill Goodwin, donated toward the creation of the signature engineering building Goodwin Hall on Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg campus in 2014.
“The other transformational aspect of this financial support is it’s going to enable us to hire quite a few new researchers, particularly in the cancer space,” Friedlander said. “This is an area that we’ve been meaning to grow in, and we’ve been growing incrementally, but now we can really make a big step.”
For an entity that only opened in 2010, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute is maturing at a promising pace, Friedlander said. Other major medical institutions — places like John Hopkins and Harvard — started long ago, providing quite the head-start compared to Virginia Tech.
“We’ve gotten past that initial hurdle of developing an identity and a reputation where our colleagues around the country recognize the excellence and what goes on here,” Friedlander said. “We’re on the world stage, and we’re ready to take that next big step.”
He said that type of recognition would not be possible without partnerships stretching across industries, the state and country. But it started with the local community in Roanoke, and the institute wants to share its efforts and triumphs with its local community, Friedlander said.
“It is really something for all Roanoke to be proud of, because Roanoke has contributed to it,” Friedlander said. “It will make a difference in peoples’ health and lives not only here, but all over the country and around the world.”