The Lisbon based Champalimaud Foundation has received a donation of €50 million for the construction of a research and treatment center for pancreatic cancer.

The bequest was made by Mauricio Botton Carasso and his wife, Charlotte Botton, the owners of Danone, a multinational food-products corporation founded in Spain, in 1919, by Mauricio Botton Carasso.

The research center it is expected to open in October 2020, ten years after the inauguration of the prestigious ‘Champalimaud Center for the Unknown’, a multidisciplinary research facility housing academics, researchers and medical doctors, from 20 different countries, in the fields of molecular biology, genetics, immunology, oncology, neurosciences, and behavioural psychology. 

According to the information provided by the Champalimaud Foundation, Botton Carasso was born in France and descends from a third generation Sephardic Jewish family. He is the grandson of Isaac Carasso, the founder of Danone.  The new pancreatic cancer research center will be named “Botton-Champalimaud.”

Pancreatic cancer is currently responsible for the death of around 1,300 people a year in Portugal and over 330,000 people worldwide.

The Champalimaud Foundation is a private biomedical research foundation created in 2004 according to the will of the late entrepreneur António de Sommer Champalimaud.

PAJ/Staff

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