Risky Business

Supporting the front lines of medical science is the first step from bench to bedside, and Ralph Wilson Jr. is no newcomer to getting things started

Ralph Wilson Sr. and Ralph Wilson Jr. in 1942

They called it the Foolish Club.

When Ralph Wilson Jr. formed the Buffalo Bills and joined with Lamar Hunt and six others to form the American Football League, no one thought the team —or the league —would last. But it was a risk Wilson was willing to take. Within a few years, competitive play between the Bills and a host of other teams led to an AFL-NFL merger, kicking off, as it were, a new and exciting chapter in American sports history.

Today many adjectives might be applied to the ventures of Wilson, who lives in the Detroit area and has enjoyed a long and active business career. “Successful,” “fearless,” and “inspired” come to mind, but “foolish” isn’t among them. Today, in fact, Wilson’s willingness to embrace risk is offering hope to people with a variety of debilitating diseases. With the founding of the Ralph C. Wilson Sr. and Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Medical Research Foundation, some of this country’s best and brightest medical scientists are being given a chance to explore uncharted approaches to curing disease and treating injury.

This is a foundation with an interesting history. It’s just one branch of a philanthropic effort that has touched thousands of lives —food banks, education, the arts, and even animal shelters have been bolstered by gifts from Wilson’s foundation. But in 2000, Wilson decided that the time was right for a biomedical sciences funding organization with a difference: one whose specific charge would be determined by those who work at the front lines of biomedical science. He invited representatives from six of the nation’s finest medical research organizations —the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, Wayne State University, Roswell Park Cancer Center, and the University of Michigan —to attend an initial meeting.

“They convened an advisory group to give advice as to how the foundation should work in its mission of supporting biomedical research,”says Steve Goldstein, Ph.D., the Henry Ruppenthal Professor of Orthopedic Surgery and Bioengineering and Michigan’s emissary to the group. “The first discussions we had were to talk about grant procedures. They were basically asking, ‘How can this foundation have an impact on medical science?’The board came up with the concept to support creative, new, riskier research and to do it in a peer review process.”

Goldstein stresses what anyone involved in medical research knows all too well: that securing funds for startup projects is as difficult as it is vitally important. “The reality is that agencies like the NIH fund very conservatively,”he says. “They have too many applications and not enough money and they end up funding projects they are pretty certain will work. That leaves a big hole when you have an ‘out of the box’idea. How do you get started? You need pilot funds to give you the freedom to think innovatively…”

From their initial discussions, the foundation began a first-tier funding program focusing on the six participating institutions. Today, four U-M researchers are among the recipients of this pilot funding. One of them, Daniel J. Goldman, Ph.D., a professor of biological chemistry and senior research scientist in the Mental Health Research Institute, is using transgenic zebrafish to learn more about central nervous system regeneration. “The Wilson Foundation has made a profound impact on our research,”Goldman says. “One of the best ways to evaluate this is from our results and the ability of those results to attract additional funding. Our recently awarded state of Michigan Life Sciences Corridor Grant provides over $1 million to support our research for the next three years and attests to our accomplishments. We are very grateful to the Foundation for providing the seed money to get this work off the ground.”

Says Ralph Wilson Jr., “We are pleased that all of our 2000 grant program recipients have received follow-up funding to continue their projects, and that the efforts of our Scientific Advisory Committee and our Wilson Fellow research scientists have been recognized. In several cases substantial grants from NIH and state agencies will provide three to five years of continued research. Without the risk of this leading-edge research funding, these rewards would not be possible.”

They say every journey begins with a first step —something Ralph Wilson knows all too well. From a risky first step was born one of America’s most powerful sports organizations. Now that Wilson’s focus is on medicine, one can only imagine the great good that lies around the corner as the daring, new ideas he is funding are given flight: repair of spinal cord injuries, new treatments and cures for arthritis, mental illness, and more.

Sometimes, you just have to take a chance.

—WH