Pushing the frontiers of science and medicine

Griffin Catalyst's commitment to improving and expanding the effectiveness of health care for patients is at the heart of our extensive investments in biomedical research, computational medicine, and accelerated vaccine development, among other critical areas.
Photo Credit: Adie Bush
Scientific advancements are increasingly turning what was once impossible into what is achievable. Griffin Catalyst identifies and invests in early research and timely solutions that have transformational potential to drive progress for current and future generations.

our impact stories

Images on a screen of pathological alpha-synuclein in the human brain

Pioneering a Breakthrough in Treating Parkinson’s Disease

As researchers work toward a cure for Parkinson’s disease, they have discovered a crucial link between a protein called alpha-synuclein and the debilitating neurodegenerative disease.

Partnering with The Michael J. Fox Foundation, Griffin Catalyst funded a competition which challenged researchers to develop a tool to visualize and trace alpha-synuclein in the living human brain for the first time. The competition’s promising results have catapulted the field forward and have put us on a path to revolutionizing care for millions of Parkinson’s patients around the world.

Leveraging Big Data for Scientific Progress

The digital transformation has placed data at the center of just about every industry. Perhaps nowhere is the opportunity more significant, or less realized, than medicine, where big data has the potential to revolutionize our understanding and treatment of disease.

Griffin Catalyst is advancing this effort through the support of Nightingale Open Science and the Open Datasets Initiative, enabling the world’s leading researchers to leverage machine learning and predictive analytics to solve some of medicine’s most important and urgent challenges.

Advancing the Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19

In early 2020, a global pandemic was imminent and the need for action was urgent. Ken Griffin assessed both the scale of the crisis and the scope of the response required to overcome it.

From rapid testing and convalescent plasma therapies to COVID-19 bioresource repositories, funding from Griffin Catalyst delivered critical innovations to help fight the pandemic. Griffin was also instrumental in architecting Operation Warp Speed‘s accelerated vaccine development—delivering safe, effective COVID-19 vaccines in record time and helping to save many millions of lives.

1st

Ever imaging of alpha-synuclein in the living human brain—a critical step toward understanding Parkinson’s

175,000

Now-digitized images that can be leveraged with AI to better identify high-risk breast cancer

150+

Countries to be equipped with preparedness models to better manage future pandemics

In Nightingale Open Science’s bold approach, Griffin Catalyst recognized the same kind of openness to innovation and willingness to transform existing sectors that has long characterized Ken Griffin’s own ventures. At Providence Cancer Institute, researchers scan pathology images which enable machine learning to identify new markers for breast cancer, thus providing a powerful new direction for research and treatment.
I’m okay with people tearing apart everything they’ve ever done and replacing it with what is better, what is relevant, what will create the success we need for the next decade.
Ken Griffin
Founder, Griffin Catalyst
In Nightingale Open Science’s bold approach, Griffin Catalyst recognized the same kind of openness to innovation and willingness to transform existing sectors that has long characterized Ken Griffin’s own ventures. At Providence Cancer Institute, researchers scan pathology images which enable machine learning to identify new markers for breast cancer, thus providing a powerful new direction for research and treatment.

Featured Partners

Our partner organizations are doing vital work in science and medicine. We’re proud to support them.

In Brief

June 30, 2020
Griffin Catalyst has made the largest gift in the history of the Navy SEAL Foundation, to provide critical education, health care, and financial support to members of one of the U.S. military’s most elite special operations forces and their families.
September 8, 2023
In 2022, Griffin Catalyst joined with partners to support the Organs Initiative, a coalition leveraging data to drive change with broad bipartisan support. The challenge: To fix a broken, inefficient organ donation system that leads to tens of thousands of healthy organs going unrecovered each year and contributes to 30 Americans dying every day for lack of an available organ. In August 2022, the group achieved the first major overhaul of the organ donation system in 40 years, projected to save over 7,000 lives annually. Almost a year later, in July 2023, Congress unanimously passed legislation to break up
December 27, 2023
The success of Operation Warp Speed in 2020, which brought forth an effective COVID-19 vaccine in less than twelve months, was not only a scientific breakthrough but also a demonstration of the power of an approach called an advanced market commitment (AMC). By creating a demand so that pharmaceutical companies could invest in production prior to proving the efficacies of vaccines, this successful approach accelerated time to market and highlighted the opportunity for a class of similar “market-shaping tools” to accelerate progress. To expand this approach, Griffin Catalyst and Schmidt Futures have partnered with the University of Chicago to launch
October 28, 2024
Griffin Catalyst provided a seed gift of $2.5 million to accelerate the efforts of Feng Zhang, a faculty member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, to develop “programmable therapeutics,” an approach that holds promise for revolutionizing medicine by reprogramming cells to cure a wide range of human diseases.
August 30, 2024
Since 2023, Griffin Catalyst has announced transformative gifts to three major health care institutions in Miami. Taken together, the support—totaling $125 million—represents an investment in the future of medical care and research in South Florida.
May 31, 2024
Launched in 2023, the Miami-Dade Innovation Authority leverages the power of competition and innovation to support start-ups, scale solutions to local problems, and improve lives.
May 23, 2024
To pay tribute to the nation's most distinguished military heroes—and to unite our country around the values their stories represent—Griffin Catalyst is supporting the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation with a $30 million gift. The National Medal of Honor Griffin Institute is a key component of a three-pronged, $300 million effort that also includes a new museum in Arlington, Texas, and a new monument in Washington, D.C.
May 20, 2024
In December 2023, Griffin Catalyst and the David Geffen Foundation announced a gift of $400 million to New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), one of the most renowned and advanced cancer research and treatment institutions in the world. This landmark gift—the largest donation to the institution in its nearly 150-year history—will allow MSK to significantly expand and upgrade its research, educational, and treatment facilities toward a singular goal: eradicating cancer.
February 12, 2024
The Lincoln Memorial has long been one of America’s most visited monuments and the scene of some of the defining moments of the last century. In time for the 250th anniversary of the country, a new expansion project will transform a massive, long-hidden space beneath the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall into an immersive museum, exhibition, and theater space, encouraging visitors to explore the story of one of America’s greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln, and to learn about the nation’s progress toward becoming a more perfect union.

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