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The University of Virginia is launching a new biotechnology institute that positions UVA at the very forefront of cutting-edge medicine, such as cellular and gene therapies that revolutionize how diseases are treated and cured. The new institute is made possible in large part due to a $100 million gift from the couple after whom it will be named.
—Paul Manning
In addition to transforming how healthcare is delivered across the state, UVA’s ambitious plans will have a vast economic impact on both Central Virginia and the entire Commonwealth. The new Manning Institute is anticipated to generate hundreds of jobs directly, as well as potentially thousands indirectly. It also anticipated to attract pharmaceutical and biotech companies to what is expected to become a major hub for research and manufacturing centered around UVA’s new state-of-the-art biotech facility. The economic impact could be more than $1 billion in the coming years, officials estimate.
The new institute has been made possible by a substantial investment by the state and a generous $100 million gift from Paul Manning, the chairman and chief executive officer of PBM Capital, a healthcare-focused investment firm. Manning is a longtime supporter of UVA and UVA Health’s research efforts.
“Our goal is to have the best possible medicine – next-generation medicine – for the residents of Virginia and people around the globe,” Manning said. “We’re building a world-class facility that will compete with anybody in the world in terms of research, manufacturing and treatment.”
ACTING ON INTERESTS: At their home in Keswick, Virginia, Diane and Paul Manning pursue a variety of interests and activities, including maintaining a vineyard, raising horses, keeping an authentically reconstructed Irish pub, and caring for their two family dogs.
K. Craig Kent, MD, chief executive officer of UVA Health and UVA’s executive vice president for health affairs, called the new institute a “historic milestone” for UVA Health that will fill a critical gap between the research bench and the patients’ bedsides. The new institute, he said, will accelerate medical research, speed new treatments to patients and advance UVA Health’s mission to transform health and inspire hope for all Virginians and beyond.
“This is a translational research program unlike any that exists in the Commonwealth of Virginia,” Kent said. “It is the beginning of an exciting new chapter for UVA Health that will produce concrete benefits for patients here in Virginia and everywhere.”
The Manning Institute will help find new treatments and cures for even the most challenging and devastating diseases, including those for which we now lack effective treatments. Its focuses will include cellular therapy, gene therapy, nanotechnology and drug delivery as well as other areas of focus that hold the potential to transform medicine as we know it. The institute will allow UVA to capitalize on its existing strengths, such as immunotherapy, which supercharges the immune system to defeat diseases such as cancer, and nanotechnology, which aims to improve human health using tools far tinier than the width of a single human hair. Nanotechnology, for example, can be used to enhance drug delivery, so that a drug is delivered exactly where it is needed and not to cells where it might be harmful—true precision medicine.
In addition to accelerating such research, the new institute will allow UVA to expand its clinical trial offerings, making it possible for more people to access new treatments as they are being developed – sometimes years before they become widely available.
The launch of the institute will also help UVA attract top talent and bolster funding for its research efforts, officials say. Ultimately, they foresee the institute generating an “ecosystem” of innovation, discovery, manufacturing and industry that will have benefits that go far beyond Charlottesville. They note, for example, that the development of the Research Triangle in North Carolina has attracted hundreds of companies there.
