| SVU |
CZECHOSLOVAK SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES |
SVU Member Donates $105 Million to University
We have just learned that an internationally known SVU scientist Jan T. Vilcek, Professor of Microbiology at the New York University School of Medicine, has made a donation with an estimated value of $105 million to his university where he has conducted productive research for four decades.
Dr. Vilcek is a native of Bratislava of a Jewish family who survived the German occupation of Czechoslovakia and the Holocaust. He became a physician and in 1964 he and his wife escaped from the Communist Czechoslovakia and eventually settled in New York City where they have lived ever since. Dr. Vilcek?s wife, Marica, worked for over 30 years in a curatorial position at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Dr. Vilcek was one of the first researchers to work on the immune system protein interferon and since the 80s he worked with another immune protein, TNF-alpha. He succeeded in developing a monoclonal antibody that blocked TNF-alpha which was later enveloped into the drug Remicade. The latter drug became a major success and basis for Dr. Vilcek's fortune.
Dr. Vilcek's donation is one of the largest donations given to a University and certainly it is the largest donation by any scientist with the roots in the former Czechoslovakia.
SVU applauds Dr. Vilcek's unprecedented action and wishes him well in the future years.
Miloslav Rechcigl
SVU President
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