Health & Medicine

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The Starr Foundation’s significant contributions to health and medicine aim to improve patient care, treatment, and health outcomes.

“Our goal is to speed research discoveries from the bench to the bedside, where doctors can improve the quality of care for patients and the quality of life for all of us.”

Maurice R. Greenberg

Longtime Chair of The Starr Foundation

Through long-term strategic partnerships with leading medical centers and investments in pioneering research, the Foundation helps researchers, junior investigators, physician-scientists, and institutions advance the frontiers of medicine, which extends and improves people’s lives. Foundation funding has also supported upgraded facilities and other capital initiatives, including improvements that translate directly to better care and outcomes.

$1.4B+

Awarded

1,656

Grants

300

Organizations

Transformational Research

Through more than $400 million in research grants, The Starr Foundation’s support has helped individual institutions and multi-institutional collaborations uncover new disease-treatment pathways and transform previously fatal diseases into manageable chronic conditions. These efforts include groundbreaking work in cancer, hepatitis C, metabolic disorders, HIV/AIDS, and obesity/type 2 diabetes, among others.

Research Areas

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Cancer

Stem Cell Research

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Past Work: HIV/AIDs

Grantee spotlight

Nobel Prize Winner Charles M. Rice: Saving Millions of Lives Around the World

Maurice R. and Corinne P. Greenberg Chair in Virology, The Rockefeller University

More than 70 million people worldwide live with hepatitis C, an aggressive viral infection that causes severe liver inflammation and can lead to liver scarring or cancer. Transmitted by blood, hepatitis C can be extremely difficult to treat, often requiring a liver transplant. In 1997, Dr. Charles M. Rice, whose work at the Rockefeller University is supported by a Starr Foundation endowment,
helped identify and characterize the virus responsible for hepatitis C. Dr. Rice’s research paved the way for highly accurate blood tests for the virus and the creation of three new classes of curative drugs. For his game-changing work, Dr. Rice and two of his colleagues won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The Nobel Committee said Dr. Rice’s breakthroughs have saved millions of lives around the world.

In 2016, Dr. Rice also shared in the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the United States’ most prestigious science prize, for developing a system to study the replication of the hepatitis C virus and using it to revolutionize treatment.

Collaborations

The Starr Foundation’s largest commitments have supported collaborative research, providing opportunities for research scientists to work together, share data, approach problems from an interdisciplinary perspective, and make large-scale projects more feasible.

“Research in the fields of genomics, stem cells, and neuroscience has increased in complexity, but that complexity creates opportunities. It is exciting to see the collaborations among biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and chemists as they forge new paths to understanding diseases and possible cures. That is what our grantmaking is about: fostering the exploration and development of new opportunities.”

Maurice R. Greenberg

Longtime Chair of The Starr Foundation

The Foundation has made grants in excess of $400 million to support multi-institutional partnerships, including the Starr Cancer Consortium, the Tri-Institutional Stem Cell Initiative, and the New York Genome Center, as well as collaborations within institutions, such as the Starr Fund for Collaborative Science at the Rockefeller University.

“Today, more than ever, the collaborative approach to science is vital to accelerating the pace of discovery and translating basic knowledge into medical applications.”

Maurice R. Greenberg

Longtime Chair of The Starr Foundation

collaborative research initiatives

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Starr Cancer Consortium

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Tri-Institutional Stem Cell Initiative

Key Partners

New York City is home to many of the world’s leading medical research institutions, whose gold-standard patient care and scientific advances improve health outcomes across medical disciplines and benefit patients across the globe. Through long-term partnerships with these key institutions, The Starr Foundation’s support fosters collaborative, cutting-edge research in cancer and stem cell biology; fuels advances in biomedicine, genetic medicine, cardiac care, women’s health, and pediatric care; upgrades and expands the facilities of preeminent hospitals and research institutions to improve patient care; and ensures that the next generation of medical professionals can pursue their education, research, and medical practice without financial burden.