Penn Medicine announced a $50 million gift from Stanley C. Middleman on Thursday to support early-stage research and will name a recently expanded building at 3600 Civic Center Blvd. in the businessman’s honor.
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Income from the fund will be used to accelerate work on therapies for cancer, autoimmune diseases, infectious diseases, and other serious conditions, with a goal ofshortening the path from the laboratory to the market, Penn said.
“I was born and raised in Philadelphia, and I’m proud to support Penn Medicine and the extraordinary work being done there to advance medicine and improve people’s lives,” Middleman said in a news release provided to The Inquirer in advance.
The Middleman Center “will bring together the people and ideas” to support new approaches to treatment and scientific discovery, he added.
The $50 million gift marks his first to Penn. He previously donated undisclosed amounts to his alma mater, Temple University, and to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which named the main patient tower at its King of Prussia hospital for Middleman’s family.
Middleman founded privately owned Freedom Mortgage Corp. in South Jersey in 1990 and grew it into one of the nation’s largest lenders before moving the company’s headquarters to Florida in the early 2020s.
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Middleman is among the owners of the Philadelphia Phillies.
Boost for research at Penn
The building being renamed for Middleman underwent a $376 million, 217,000-square-foot expansion that opened last year. Itadded seven floors, including as many as 37 labs. Penn originally opened the building in 2018 with eight floors and 250,000 square feet of office space, which has also been renovated.
The new floors house the Colton Center for Autoimmunity at Penn and the High-Throughput Institute for Discovery, a specialized lab testing patient samples to help make diagnoses and guide treatments. The Middleman Center also includes a Biosafety Level 3 lab, which is specially equipped to handle infectious disease specimens.
“Anchoring the western edge of Penn Medicine’s campus, the Middleman Center is uniquely positioned to bring together biomedical researchers, physicians, medical students, patients, and experts from engineering, business, and other areas of the University of Pennsylvania,” said university president J. Larry Jamesonin the news release.
“This creates an extraordinary environment for discovery — not just sparking ideas but seeing them all the way through to the moments where lives change for the better, as a result of discovery,” he said.
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