The Red Gates Foundation, a private charitable foundation based in Richmond, has committed $50 million to Virginia Tech’s medical research institute in Roanoke — equaling the largest gifts ever made to the Blacksburg university.
The new financial commitment is aimed at accelerating health sciences research at Virginia Tech, and some of the funding will go toward efforts in Greater Washington, the school said Tuesday.
The Red Gates Foundation was established in 2020 by the estate of Richmond businessman Hunter Goodwin, who died of cancer early that year at the age of 51. The $50 million commitment equals the 2018 donation made by the Horace G. Fralin Charitable Trust, as well as Heywood and Cynthia Fralin, to name the school’s Roanoke research institute the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion. That donation also supported research there. In 2021, aerospace and defense giant The Boeing Co. committed $50 million to Virginia Tech’s computer science-focused innovation campus in Alexandria.
Virginia Tech said the Red Gates Foundation gift will allow the university to increase its faculty-led research teams — namely recruiting 14 cancer and neuroscience researchers. It will also fund six projects focused on cancer and brain disorders. They include: a study on reducing the side effects of radiation treatment, a new technique to destroy invasive brain cancer cells, a smoking cessation app for veterans, therapies to slow and prevent Parkinson’s disease, applications to rapidly measure neurochemicals and “development of a compound that mimics exercise for promoting health and preventing and treating” noncommunicable diseases, including cancer, the school said.
“These six projects will each provide important new scientific insights and take critical steps to advance those insights to evaluation of effective diagnostics, preventatives and treatments,” institute Executive Director Michael Friedlander said in a statement.
Virginia Tech also said the gift “enhances” the school’s partnership with Children’s National Hospital in D.C. by facilitating the hiring of several additional research teams located at Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus, its development on the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Northwest D.C.
Virginia Tech's research institute was started in 2007 as a joint effort between the state, Virginia Tech and Roanoke’s Carilion Clinic. That effort also stood up Virginia Tech’s medical school.
Virginia Tech President Timothy Sands said in a statement the Red Gates Foundation donation is “a powerful endorsement” or the biomedical research institute.
“As we work to significantly increase the impact of our biomedical research, this gift will accelerate our timeline and help recruit world-leading researchers to join us in fighting diseases that impact millions of people worldwide,” Sands said.
