Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim gives $65M for genetic research on cancer, diabetes, kidney disease

Mexican tycoon gives $65 million to genetic study

MEXICO CITY — Telecommunications mogul Carlos Slim pledged $65 million Tuesday for genetic research on cancer, type 2 diabetes and kidney disease.

Scientists from Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Mexico’s National Institute of Genomic Medicine will collaborate on the three-year Slim Genomic Medicine Initiative.

Slim, who heads the Grupo Carso conglomerate and is one of the world’s richest men, said the project will help doctors better diagnose diseases and improve therapies.

“Only with the development of this genomic science and surrounding technology will it be possible, as it was before with vaccines, to face these diseases and prevent these diseases through their early detection, their early diagnosis,” he said.

Eric S. Lander, president and director of the Broad Institute, a joint project of Harvard and MIT, said investigators will use about 10,000 samples to study the three diseases. Researchers will analyze seven types of cancer, likely including breast cancer, he said.

Their diabetes research will focus on Mexico and Latin America, where diabetes is one of the most common inherited diseases.

Scientists aim to understand the diseases’ genomic bases, not develop treatments.

“The project alone cannot possibly produce treatments in three years,” Lander said.

Funding for the research will come from the Carlos Slim Health Institute, which Slim founded three years ago to improve medical care for Latin America’s neediest families.

Slim said the project is meant to support Mexican research and is not a business venture.

“Grupo Carso is not thinking of this as a commercial matter. It is totally a project with two objectives: One, to perform this investigation and disseminate it worldwide so that there are other contributions to general knowledge; the other, to try in some way for this to push and support more research in Mexico,” he said.