On a rainy Friday afternoon in September 2011, The Wistar Institute celebrated a landmark occasion. Crowded inside the atrium of Wistar’s historic 1894 building, away from the torrent outside, the Institute made officially public its intent to build a new, seven-story, 89,700-square-foot research tower and renovate significant portions of its existing research complex.

This year, The Wistar Institute embarked on an ambitious master plan that will not only add a massive research tower to the campus, but also completely modernize and upgrade the existing facilities through over 50,000 square feet of renovations. As if that were not remarkable enough, the Institute plans to make all of these dramatic changes while keeping its laboratories open for business.

Commitment is a given for scientists. Among all the characteristics commonly associated with scientists, perhaps the trait of focused commitment holds the most truth. You simply cannot obtain a Ph.D. from a reputable institution without long hours alone at the laboratory bench, in front of a computer monitor, or out in the field. But it takes real commitment to cling to a line of research when government grants are hard to come by and even your colleagues raise their eyebrows at your work.

Each cell in the human body has the ability to self-destruct if the need arises, whether that need is to remove the webbing between fetal fingers before birth or to remove an infected or defective cell from a healthy body. Cancer cells, however, tend to rewire themselves in a way that cuts this self-destruction fuse. 

While it is true that most donations to Wistar arrive in the form of a check or direct monetary contributions, sometimes they take a less orthodox or more creative form.