Looks like Eric Lander and co at the Broad Institute are not having trouble raising money, even in these tough NIH-funding times. It will receive $100 million to study the genetics of psychiatric disease. It’s apparently the largest gift to a US institution for research on mental illness.

The money is from the Maryland-based Stanley Medical Research Institute, funded by Mr. and Mrs. Stanley of Connecticut, and it says it’s the world’s largest private source of funding for research on mental illness.

Mr. Stanley, 75, made his millions by founding MBI, a half-billion dollar company in based in Norwalk, CT that sells jewelry, leather-bound books, and collectible items like stamps.

Indeed, it seems the Broad is awash in funding. They got a big NIH grant late last year and I’m speculating that it’s probably having an effect on their publication record. The top 10 list of Boston-based Nature authors in recent years is dominated by people based at the Broad.

To me, this is more evidence that Boston research is greatly benefiting from philanthropic sources of funding (other examples: Mr. and Mrs. Stowers funding local stem cell research at Harvard and MGH and the Ludwig Fund giving money to the MIT Center for Cancer Research), which can raise certain issues.

I find it interesting that people who became millionaires through businesses that have nothing to do with science are quickly becoming the benefactors of science (The Stowers made their money from a mutual fund company). In the long-term, will they have an effect on the research agenda? Will scientists find themselves doing more and more applied, “translational” research, since that’s presumably what philanthropists favor? Is that ok?