Hope For Life


Giving Hope For Life^® to Others

     The Stowers Institute for Medical Research is built on the desire to offer hope - hope for people whose genes condemn them to a long battle with cancer; hope for parents who wake in the night to tend a diabetic child, then toss and turn as they wonder what the future holds for their son or daughter; hope for adult children who see parents sliding into the lost land of Alzheimer’s and wonder if they will ever find their way out.

      Researchers at the Stowers Institute pursue the dream of ending these and other diseases through basic biomedical research into the way genes determine our biological fate and how they can be altered to prevent or slow disease. Stowers scientists do experiments intended to fill in the missing pieces to the puzzles of life, to broaden the base of knowledge on specific cellular and molecular changes involved in the growth of disease.

     Some ask why the Institute doesn’t concentrate directly on treating sick people, or on developing drug therapies. The answer is that Stowers researchers are dedicating their efforts to understanding disease about which science does not yet understand well enough to design successful treatments or even specific experiments.

     Modern biomedical research has already enabled society to conquer many bacterial, viral and parasitic diseases, which plagued people for centuries including polio, diphtheria, smallpox and pneumonia. Today research focuses on diseases that result from failures of basic molecular mechanisms within cells and tissues, including heart disease, cancer, arthritis, kidney disease and some forms of diabetes.

     These diseases may be prevented, cured or delayed if scientists understand their basic mechanisms and doctors can intervene at the initial stages. The Stowers Institute promises to make a major contribution to this important bank of knowledge.