Massachusetts General Hospital has received the largest gift for cancer research in its history, officials said Wednesday.
In a statement, the hospital said the gift is from Jason and Keely Krantz and the hospital’s Center for Cancer Research will be known as the Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research.
The hospital didn’t disclose the amount of the donation but said it includes annual funding for collaborative research projects, advanced technologies for lab research, and “an endowment to ensure sustainability.”
The multipronged gift includes annual Quantum Awards of up to $2 million to support treatment research, Breakthrough Awards of up to $1 million to “accelerate” promising scientific concepts, and Spark Awards of $100,000 to test “exciting new thought-provoking ideas,” the hospital said.
Advertisement
“Multiple awards from each level will be made each year to fund the best ideas,” the hospital said.
Officials said the couple’s donation is the largest in the cancer center’s 34-year history, as well as the largest “cancer research-directed gift” in the history of the hospital, which opened in 1821.
Keely Krantz said supporting cancer research is critically important.
“The need to dramatically advance cancer research has never been greater and we want to inspire other people to give while they can see the impact of their investment,” she said in the statement. “The more people who get involved, the quicker we can create new insights, and the sooner those insights can be leveraged not only at Mass General, but also by researchers at all cancer centers across the country and internationally.”
Her comments were echoed by Jason Krantz.
“Cancer research is at a crossroads,” he said. “We’ve seen incredible progress in the last decade, but cures for many forms of the disease remain out of reach. We want to give Mass General Cancer Center researchers the support they need to close that gap. We want to remove the obstacles and enable them to run with their best ideas, faster.”
Advertisement
The center is home to 50 faculty members, appointed in multiple departments of Harvard Medical School, whose lab research spans fundamental cancer genomics, proteomics and cell biology, to molecular diagnostics, drug discovery and cellular immune therapies, the hospital said.
“Medicine’s progress is rooted in basic science discovery,” David F. M. Brown, MGH’s president, said in the statement. “This gift from the Krantz family is a powerful recognition of the enormous contributions that Mass General researchers have made in the past but also of the pivotal role and responsibility we have going forward in the ongoing fight against cancer.”
Hospital officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for further comment on the gift.
They said the Krantzes “earned their professional stripes” in the venture capital and tech startup fields, and that Jason Krantz serves as executive chairman of Definitive Healthcare, a health market intelligence company.
In 2019, Cambridge entrepreneur Phillip “Terry’' Ragon and his wife Susan Ragon donated $200 million to MGH for vaccine research, a gift hospital officials at the time described as the largest in the hospital’s history.
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.