MIT continues to be awash in philanthropic funding (see the recent NNB article about the influence of powerful foundations on campus). Today, it announced a $20 million grant from the Ludwig Fund to launch the Ludwig Center for Molecular Oncology, which will focus on the study of metastasis, be part of MIT’s Center for Cancer Research and be headed up by pioneering cancer researcher Robert Weinberg of the Whitehead.

Although MIT has benefited from National Cancer Institute funding, now that NIH funding is declining, researchers will probably have to look elsewhere to fund large new projects. Philanthropic organizations are an obvious place to look. According to an article in today’s Globe, this is MIT’s biggest private donation for cancer research.

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and four other institutions (Johns Hopkins, Stanford, University of Chicago and Memorial Sloan-Kettering in NYC) have also each received $20 million from the Ludwig Fund for cancer research. According to the Globe article, the Ludwig Fund requires the six institutions to collaborate on projects and to study how cancer spreads through the body. The institutions get to decide which projects they will fund with the money, but the foundation is encouraging them to fund high-risk projects that likely wouldn’t get government funding.