Funding will enable continued development of Indiana’s life sciences opportunities
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind., October 8, 2008 — BioCrossroads today announced the award of a multi-year, $2.8 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. Through this grant, BioCrossroads will continue its targeted efforts to find, form and engage in strategic opportunities to build upon Indiana’s traditionally strong base of academic, business and community life sciences assets. The grant will fund through 2010 a range of charitable, educational and scientific activities of BioCrossroads, which is an initiative of the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership.
“Lilly Endowment’s substantial gift in 2000 to launch the Indiana Genomics Initiative at the IU School of Medicine was in many ways the inspiration for our community to bring the BioCrossroads initiative together,” said Dr. August Watanabe, Chairman of the Board of BioCrossroads. “When BioCrossroads was formed in 2004, the Endowment was the first charitable foundation to support it. The Endowment’s continued support is a catalyst for driving new initiatives and opportunities, and it has played a pivotal role in helping Indiana secure the position we enjoy today as one of the leading life sciences regions in the U.S.”
Grants from the Endowment to support BioCrossroads have been made to the CICP Foundation. These grants, which now total nearly $16 million, have enabled BioCrossroads to initiate several successful public-private-university collaborations based upon specific opportunities, including:
BioCrossroadsLINX – A new nonprofit initiative capturing and advancing Indiana’s capabilities in drug and biotechnology development and manufacturing through educational and workforce programs and interregional collaborations
Datalys Center – a national nonprofit initiative to carry out research on sports injuries and advance the development of effective sports injury information and accessible data for sports and health organizations Fairbanks Institute for Healthy Communities – an emerging enterprise utilizing Indiana’s vast clinical resources to gather comprehensive patient information for academic and industry discovery to help predict, prevent and treat disease Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE) – a nonprofit corporation advancing a leading national model for the secure sharing of medical information among patients, providers and other healthcare entities and the promotion of better health outcomes through higher utilization of better clinical information I-STEM (Indiana Science, Technology and Mathematics) Resource Network – a consortium of 17 higher education institutions that advances rigorous professional development for K-12 math and science teachers in Indiana
“BioCrossroads has clearly become more than the sum of its parts,” said Lilly Endowment president, N. Clay Robbins. “With its visionary board and staff leadership, it has formed a web of relationships among our state’s universities, community organizations, life science businesses and government entities. Even more important, it has inspired these organizations to work together in synergistic ways that have helped create a vibrant and stimulating life sciences environment here in Indiana. The Endowment is pleased to be able to help it build on its considerable momentum.”
About Lilly Endowment Inc.
The Endowment was founded in 1937 by three members of the Lilly family through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly and Company. While those gifts remain the financial bedrock of the Endowment, the Endowment is a separate entity from the company, with a distinct governing board, staff and location. In keeping with the wishes of the founders, the Endowment supports the causes of community development, education and religion. The Lilly family’s foremost priority was to help the people of their city and state build a better life, and the Endowment remains primarily committed to Indianapolis and Indiana.
About BioCrossroads
BioCrossroads (www.biocrossroads.com) is Indiana’s comprehensive initiative to grow the life sciences, a public-private collaboration that supports the region’s research and corporate strengths while encouraging new business development. BioCrossroads provides money and support to life sciences businesses, promotes strategic collaborations among Indiana’s research universities, launches new life sciences enterprises (Indiana Health Information Exchange, Fairbanks Institute for Healthy Communities, BioCrossroadsLINX, and Datalys Center) expands partnerships among Indiana’s life science research, business and community institutions, promotes science education and markets the diverse capabilities of Indiana’s life sciences sector.
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