The Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah has announced gifts and grants totaling $100 million in support of an expansion of its research facilities.

The six-story, 220,000-square-foot expansion, to be named the Primary Children's & Families' Cancer Research Center, will be dedicated to research rather than treatment. With the funds, the hospital plans to hire three hundred specialists and will strengthen its research on cancers that often are passed genetically, including leukemia, sarcomas, and brain cancer. Design of the project is under way, with construction slated to begin in 2014.

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, billionaire industrialist Jon M. Huntsman, Sr., the hospital's founder and principal benefactor, provided a gift equivalent to roughly half the project's cost. Gifts and grants from other individuals, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Intermountain Healthcare, and the State of Utah helped the institute meet its fundraising goal for the project.

Huntsman, a signatory to the Giving Pledge, has battled cancer four times and has lost several family members, including his biological parents and his stepmother, to various forms of the disease. He is the father of the Jon Huntsman, Jr., a former Republican primary presidential candidate who has served as governor of Utah and as U.S. ambassador to China.

"This additional research space is absolutely essential to HCI's mission to relieve the suffering of cancer patients through understanding cancer and bringing that understanding to bear in the development of new and better treatments," said Mary Beckerle, the institute's CEO and director. "When the war on cancer was launched in 1971, it was unfathomable even to imagine what is possible today. Building on our strong foundation of achievement in cancer genetics, risk assessment, and prevention, the new facility will allow us to expand in areas of critical need and will dramatically accelerate our progress."