For sale: health care facility naming rights
Even in a city full of buildings named for their benefactors, the offer is striking: Put your name on an up-and-coming research center affiliated with Harvard University and maybe help shape the scientists' agenda.
The price: $50 million.
In a move more typical of stadium owners than a laboratory in the Longwood Medical Area, the former Center for Blood Research has dropped its name of 50 years and is offering to rename itself for a major donor. The asking price is $20 million more than Fleet Bank paid to name the home of the Celtics and Bruins, but officials at the center, now temporarily called the CBR Institute for Biomedical Research, hope that a benefactor will see the value in supporting a stable of researchers that includes this year's winner of one of the world's most prestigious science prizes.
The center's unusual strategy is part of a boomlet in naming rights in the health care industry, as more conventional donations have leveled off and hospitals, labs, and medical schools are looking for new ways to fund their growth. Just down the street from the center, Harvard Medical School is offering to name its six-month-old research building after a donor who gives $100 million. Phoenix Children's Hospital is asking $50 million to put a donor's name on the new medical center.
"Even six months ago, I would have said [that offering naming rights] sounds different, but I think we are going to see this more and more," said Paulette Roberts, chairwoman-elect of the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy.
The potential for controversy is also clear: CBR's plan has drawn concern from Harvard because center officials are considering drug companies as potential suitors.
"We would not name a center for a pharmaceutical company . . . because we want to make sure the research that's conducted in the center is free from bias," said Jeffrey Newton, Harvard Medical School's dean for resource development.
Institute officials say they will hold any donor to high ethical standards, but they insist it's too early to rule out anyone, including the pharmaceutical companies.
"I would like to talk to whoever is deeply interested in supporting us," said Kim Lubin, CBR's annual giving officer.
A major chunk of the naming-rights money would go toward a new home for scientists, who have been scattered among four locations as they have moved away from their roots in blood research into the fast-growing study of the role of the immune system in disease. The center's work has led to improvements in the treatment of autoimmune diseases such as lupus, as well as a new drug for the skin condition psoriasis. However, center officials say they have to turn down research opportunities because there is so little lab space left.
It remains an open question whether a donor will agree to such an enormous investment in a basic research center that, until now, has relied almost entirely on government grants to fund its work.
Shawmut National Corp. paid $30 million to name the FleetCenter through 2008 before being acquired by Fleet Bank. But donations for medical research are more than advertising: They are an investment in possible cures. "If a donor wanted to start his own institute, it would be hard to find one with the kind of investigators that we already have," said CBR senior investigator Fred Alt, who just won a major grant to study molecules that appear to play a key role in the aging process.
Colleges and hospitals have a long tradition of naming buildings after major donors, and even establishing new programs at their direction. In 1981, Edwin C. "Jack" Whitehead gave $135 million, a record gift for science at the time, to start the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, which became a major player in the mapping of the human genome. Likewise, Lore Harp McGovern and Patrick McGovern paid $350 million in 2000 to launch the McGovern Center for Brain Research at MIT.
What makes the naming rights at CBR and Harvard Medical School different is that the institutions are shopping for donors to invest in a building and a research institution that already exist. They already have a research agenda and a decision-making system that an active major donor could disrupt.
The most analogous situation in Boston was the 1983 renaming of the Sydney Farber Cancer Institute as the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, to reflect a $10 million gift from the Charles A. Dana Foundation. But the Dana family had a long history of financial support for the cancer institute, and the name change was more of an acknowledgement than an open sale of naming rights.
Tufts University professor Sheldon Krimsky, who has written extensively on ethics in science, said the sale of naming rights after the fact is acceptable unless the donor is either using philanthropy to improve a bad reputation or its agenda clashes with the medical institution it is supporting.
Krimsky said he's not particularly worried about either problem in these two cases. "Harvard sets its bar very high," he said.
Harvard officials scarcely talked about funding for the new, $260 million research building while the 10-story facility was under construction, so confident were they that they could find a donor willing to invest after the fact. And they have put strict limits on whose money they would accept, ruling out any commercial donor whose name might impugn the objectivity of the 800 scientists working there.
"In most institutes, you don't even begin building without donors," said one official who was involved in the project.
By contrast, CBR doesn't have the instant name recognition of Harvard Medical School, nor does it have alumni or a significant number of patients to turn to for support. Just as important, what little the public does know about the former Center for Blood Research is probably wrong.
Founded in 1952 by a blood research pioneer, Dr. Edwin J. Cohn, the center's researchers were once best known for refining techniques to separate blood for transfusions and for improving transfusion safety.
But in the last 15 years, under President Fred S. Rosen, the center grew rapidly by focusing on diseases of the immune system such as arthritis and investigating the role of inflammation in predisposing people to heart disease and other conditions.
Nonetheless, "people knock on the door and ask if they can donate blood," said Roger Sametz of Sametz Blackstone Associates, the consulting firm that is guiding CBR's name changes as part of an effort to raise the center's profile.
The effort to sell naming rights is so new that CBR officials say they don't have primary candidates, nor do they have precise guidelines on how much influence the donor would have over the center's agenda. Spokesman Hal LaCroix said the center would be flexible, considering, for example, more research involving patients or early tests of experimental drugs.
Though center officials are skeptical that a drug company would invest $50 million in them, CBR trustee Anish Dhanda said the center should consider companies that have worked closely with them, such as
Officials at Harvard, who provide teaching positions but little money for center researchers, oppose the idea of a major drug industry sponsor, but it's not clear what role they would have in CBR's name. The medical school had no say in the center's new, temporary name, though Lubin stressed that the center doesn't want to fight with Harvard.
CBR researchers are generally unconcerned about the sale of naming rights, largely because the money would pay for a new building where the researchers could be together and build an endowment allowing them to react quickly to emerging research trends.
"If more money came in, there'd be a chance for some new initiatives," said Timothy Springer, one of the center's most recognized researchers. He and one other scientist won this year's $500,000 Crafoord Prize, considered one of the most prestigious awards in basic science, for his studies of how white blood cells fight disease.
Springer said he hopes that whoever buys the naming rights will be actively involved in the center's future, but he's not worried about changes in his research life.
"I'm not concerned about the name one iota," he said.
Scott Allen can be reached at allen@globe.com.
