Ackman plans brain institute after daughter’s hemorrhage

Bill Ackman is planning a major brain research institute on Manhattan’s Upper West Side after a medical crisis involving his daughter, Fortune reported. The project could become one of New York City’s larger health research centers, with real estate deals totaling $260 million and room to expand to nearly 700,000 square feet.

According to Fortune, the Pershing Square Foundation bought the 400,000-square-foot building at 125 West End Avenue this week for $190 million. The foundation also agreed to acquire a neighboring property at 320 West 66th Street for $70 million, and additional development rights could allow the combined site to grow substantially, Ackman told the magazine.

The West End Avenue building currently operates as West End Labs, a life sciences and research campus, Fortune reported. Ackman said it will become the Ackman Oxman Institute, named for him and his wife, Neri Oxman, and will bring together specialists studying the brain across areas including rehabilitation, nutrition and longevity.

A family emergency shaped the project

Ackman told Fortune the idea took on new urgency after his 26-year-old daughter, Lucy, suffered a brain hemorrhage in February. She was found alone on the floor of her apartment 15 hours later, according to the account he gave the magazine.

Ackman said doctors would normally expect an injury involving that level of pressure on the brain over that length of time to be fatal. Lucy survived, he told Fortune, and although she lost her voice and most of her vision, he said she has been making significant progress.

Her care included experimental treatments that Ackman urged doctors to try, he told Fortune. One involved injecting mitochondria into her eye after her optic nerve was crushed, in an effort to save part of her sight, according to his account.

Ackman said the institute will build on lessons from his daughter’s treatment and seek broader advances in brain care. He told Fortune the center will include researchers working on fields such as genetics, nutrition and longevity, along with facilities capable of neurosurgery.

Earlier interest after Alzheimer’s loss

Ackman told Fortune that he and Oxman had already been considering a large brain-focused philanthropic effort after Oxman’s mother died of Alzheimer’s five years ago. They had looked at the West End Avenue site before, he said, but the property cost and the expense of staffing an institute made the plan difficult at the time.

Conditions later changed, Ackman told the magazine. He cited weakness in the life sciences sector and a greater openness among scientists to leave academia as reasons the project became more feasible. Fortune reported that Ackman closed the main property deal Tuesday morning.

The money will come from Ackman-led Pershing Square Philanthropies, which Fortune said has spent more than $1 billion to date on grants and investments. Ackman plans to develop the institute with Mount Sinai, where doctors treated his daughter, according to Fortune.

The institute’s board includes Jim Rothman, a Nobel Prize-winning cell researcher, and Andrew Huberman, the Stanford University neuroscientist who hosts the Huberman Lab podcast, Ackman told the magazine. He said the board is searching for the organization’s first chief executive and that he expects operations in the main building to begin by the end of the year.

Ackman also told Fortune that future funding is expected to come partly from startups and venture capital connected to the institute. He described the brain research center as the largest undertaking of his career.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.