January 28, 2000

Anne B. Young, MD, PhD

An anonymous donor recently contributed $2 million to the MGH to help fund a basic and clinical research center for Huntington's, Parkinson's, Lou Gehrig's and Alzheimer's diseases. The Center for Aging, Genetics and Neurodegeneration (CAGN) is scheduled to open its doors next year in the hospital's new building that is being constructed at CNY.

"The donor is an extremely philanthropic person who wants to see these devastating diseases cured," says Anne B. Young, MD, PhD, chief of the MGH Neurology Service.

The donation was made in honor of Young's late husband, John B. Penney Jr., MD, an MGH neurologist and neuroscientist, who died unexpectedly last year. "This center was a dream of both of ours," says Young. The couple learned only three days before Penney's sudden death that the CAGN would become a reality.

Giving MGH the opportunity to accelerate effective treatment therapies for age-related disorders, the center will house imaging facilities, a protein chemistry lab, a transgenic animal and behavioral lab and a high-throughput screening lab that will allow the MGH to test experimental drugs significantly faster than pharmaceutical companies now can.

With the $2 million gift, the MGH will recruit three new staff members for the center — a chemist, a screening expert and a behavioral scientist. In the center's multidisciplinary environment, the researchers will join other investigators in collaborating on common themes related to the four age-related disorders.