Caruth Awards up to $7.5 million to fund Children’s Research Institute
AN INNOVATIVE COLLABORATION, the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) melds the leading clinical resources of Children’s Medical Center with the outstanding research resources of UT Southwestern Medical Center. CRI was launched in 2011, and Dr. Sean Morrison, Ph.D., a renowned stem cell researcher, was chosen as the founding director.
“Making discoveries that can change scientific fields and yield new strategies for treating disease requires researchers of the highest caliber,” said Dr. Morrison. “Thanks to the support of the W.W. Caruth, Jr. Foundation at CFT, we are recruiting scientists and physicians who can make game-changing discoveries at the interface of regenerative medicine, cancer biology and metabolism to better understand the biological basis of disease.”
Caruth has awarded up to $7.5 million over 10 years to CRI to support recruitment and start-up costs for new physicians and scientists who will be sought from the top 1% of scientists across the country.
“Funding frontier-advancing projects in medical research was one of Will Caruth Jr.’s main focus areas when he set up the Caruth foundation here at CFT,” said Bobby Lyle, board chair of the Caruth grant committee at CFT. “CRI’s vision to create a unique scientific environment that is dedicated to groundbreaking discoveries in pediatric medicine is directly in line with our mission.”
The institute currently has more than 40 scientists in two laboratories.
It eventually will comprise 150 scientists in 15 laboratories led by UT Southwestern faculty members.