U.S. disease foundations invested about $75 million last year in biopharmaceutical companies to fund discovery and development of new drugs and therapies for their corresponding diseases, according to CenterWatch estimates published in the August 2007 issue of The CenterWatch Monthly.

The 2007 figure represents a 10-fold increase since 2000, and foundations’ investment continues to rise.

The Boston Globe picked up the story about this kind of investment, called “venture philanthropy” when it wrote about the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s latest investment in Lexington, Mass.-based Epix Pharmaceutical.

Read today’s Globe article for more.

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