Weill Cornell Medicine Launches $1.5B Campaign Centered Around Precision Medicine
A new $1.5 billion campaign launched at the New York City-based Weill Cornell Medicine will aim to harness emerging biomedical innovations across different dimensions, including a precision health enterprise that focuses on personalized disease prevention and treatment.
The “We’re Changing Medicine” campaign is the largest in Weill Cornell Medicine’s history and its first campaign in decades to advance and synergize all three institutional missions, according to the organization’s leaders: to care, discover and teach. The new campaign “will instill this essential value in the next generation of physicians and scientists, who will shape an innovative and equitable future of medicine,” according to officials who made an announcement this week.
The campaign already has about $750 million raised, with an ambitious goal of getting to $1.5 billion. Powering the campaign is $215 million in foundational gifts from several of the institution’s most longstanding benefactors.
The “We’re Changing Medicine” campaign will aim to “reimagine the basic science landscape; invest in bench-to-bedside research discoveries, including a precision health enterprise that focuses on personalized disease prevention and treatment; and support a diverse and gifted student body,” officials stated.
Via the campaign, Weill Cornell Medicine says it is investing in advanced technology and new biomedical approaches—from genomics and data science to artificial intelligence and machine learning—that should illuminate the precise origins of disease and the most optimal ways to personalize treatments. Harnessing advanced research techniques that explore the human genome, as well as observations about how demographics, social influences and lifestyle choices influence well-being, Weill Cornell Medicine will look create a robust precision health enterprise that will holistically evaluate the individual factors that underlie disease development, the organization’s leaders say.
By understanding the drivers of disease, Weill Cornell Medicine physicians and scientists believe they will be able to discern each person’s individual health risk, create personalized prevention strategies and help avert the occurrence of severe disease. Further investments in regenerative medicine and cellular therapeutics will rapidly accelerate the discovery of new treatments and therapies, enabling patients to benefit from the latest medicines should they need intervention. Data generated from precision health approaches will enable investigators to spot patterns and trends—and potentially uncover the answers to the most vexing healthcare questions, officials asserted.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated just how important medicine is to protect and enhance the health of our patients,” said Augustine M.K. Choi, M.D., the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medicine and provost for medical affairs of Cornell University. “Our accomplished physicians and scientists are committed to treating the whole patient for their whole lifespan, applying cutting-edge science and a personalized and evidence-based approach to prevent and treat disease. Because of our generous donors, Weill Cornell Medicine is uniquely positioned to meet today’s health care challenges and change medicine—because we can and must.”
What’s more, the campaign will also enable the institution to enrich its focus on women’s health and infectious diseases, as well as diseases and disorders that affect the heart, brain and metabolic system, officials noted.
