U.S. disease foundations will invest about $90 million this year in biopharmaceutical companies to fund discovery and development of new drugs and therapies for their corresponding diseases, according to CenterWatch estimates.

The 2008 figure represents a 20% increase over last year’s and a nearly 13-fold increase over the investment made in 2000. Foundations’ investment should continue to rise. Forbes magazine features the “venture philanthropy” trend in its article “Patient Power,” which will appear in print in the September 15 issue of Forbes.