Historic $104 million gift supports new Stravitz-Sanyal Institute for Liver Disease and Metabolic Health
In February, 2022, VCU announced the launch of the Stravitz-Sanyal Institute for Liver Disease and Metabolic Health. A historic gift of $104 million will from R. Todd Stravitz, M.D., and his family’s Barbara Brunckhorst Foundation, will radically expand research and treatment options for liver and liver-related metabolic diseases at VCU.
“Words cannot capture my feelings of gratitude for the transformative gift of Dr. Todd Stravitz and the Barbara Brunckhorst Foundation,” said Michael Rao, Ph.D., president of VCU and VCU Health. “Todd has made history with his incredible leadership and generosity to VCU, supporting an institute that will forever change VCU and catalyze its commitment to our work with the human liver and metabolism.”
Rao continued: “The institute’s research will have an enormous impact on our lives, changing medicine and our understanding of the role the liver plays in human health. This gift is extraordinarily generous, and it is most certainly generative. It allows us to bring together top teams to deliver clinical care, to ask important questions, develop new tools to explore what causes liver disease and how we stop it, prevent it and even reverse it. Most importantly, it will immediately make a difference in the lives of thousands of people with liver disease. Ultimately, this will positively impact millions.”
Stravitz, a physician-philanthropist in the Department of Internal Medicine at VCU School of Medicine, dedicated his whole career as a liver clinician and researcher to VCU. Before retiring in 2020, he served as medical director of liver transplantation at VCU Health’s Hume-Lee Transplant Center for a decade.