The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation has announced a $100 million gift to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the first installment of the philanthropists' $400 million pledge to build the endowment of the newly independent genomic medicine research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Created with an initial $100 million gift from Eli and Edythe Broad, the Broad Institute was established in 2004 by MIT, Harvard and its affiliated hospitals, and the Whitehead Institute to discover the knowledge buried in the human genome and use it to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to disease. In five years, it has attracted more than a thousand scientists who work on a range of cutting-edge projects in the field of biomedicine.

The foundation will continue to make installments on the Broads' pledge, with the goal of building the endowment to $1 billion through investment and additional gifts. "Our goal in funding the Broad Institute is simple — to improve the human condition," said Broad. "Edye and I are convinced that the hundreds of passionate scientists at the Broad Institute will identify the genes responsible for disease and will discover cures or completely eliminate diseases altogether."