The Harrington Project for Discovery & Development model for moving discoveries from the lab to the clinic received international exposure through the May 5, 2016 issue of Nature. The highly respected, international, peer-reviewed science journal featured The Harrington Project in an article about the role of venture philanthropy in advancing medicine.

Author Cassandra Willyard described Harrington Discovery Institute, the Bill and Linda Gates Foundation and Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure -- a family foundation established by the founders of AOL, as examples of diverse, successful funding models for drug discovery and development. Harrington Project founder Ron Harrington, Bill and Linda Gates and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan shared their views on and passion for advancing medicine through philanthropy.

The Nature article highlights not only The Harrington Project and Harrington Discovery Institute but also BioMotiv and its successful spin-off companies such as Dual Therapeutics.

“The Harrington Project and Harrington Discovery Institute are increasingly identified with enabling the physician-scientist’s mission of advancing the standard of care,” says Harrington Discovery Institute President Jonathan Stamler, MD. “To have The Harrington Project featured in Nature is further validation of the unique model we have created.”

Willyard lauds The Harrington Project’s pairing of a non-profit with a mission-aligned for-profit, underpinned by the Innovation Support Center's network of pharmaceutical industry drug development experts. She makes the case that the philanthropist’s personal participation and hands-on approach to advancing medicine distinguishes today’s venture philanthropists from earlier generations of donors who often wrote generous checks without any personal involvement in the cause.

Read the Nature article online here or find it in Nature, volume 533, pp S43-S45, May 5, 2016.