As head of a new US$100-million venture funded by philanthropist Paul Allen, Rick Horwitz must push cell biology to a new frontier.

Having overcome early skepticism to create a successful brain research institute, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has once again dipped into his personal fortune to advance science.

Paul Allen is giving $100 million to start an institute to focus on the workings of human cells as a way to battle disease.

Billionaire Paul Allen's new institute in Seattle will examine how the cells in your body work — and how and why they malfunction, leading to tumors, Alzheimer's and other diseases.

Paul Allen, the Microsoft cofounder turned billionaire philanthropist, will donate $100 million to create a research center tasked with investigating the inner workings of human cells. The ultimate goal is to deepen our understanding of how diseases emerge and how they can be treated and prevented.

With a gift of $100 million from billionaire philanthropist Paul G. Allen, scientists will embark on an effort to understand how cells work and how they malfunction in disease. Leaders of this new endeavor announced the launch of the Seattle-based Allen Institute for Cell Science today at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in Philadelphia.

Billionaire businessman and philanthropist Paul Allen plans to pump US$100 million into investigating the most basic unit of life — the cell.

We have not been seeing cells as they really are, says Rick Horwitz, and it is time for that to change.

Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen is donating $100 million of his fortune to launch what he calls an “industrial-scale” effort to understand the basic building block of all living things: the cell.