At 25, Stowers Institute Still Searching for the Secrets of Life | Kansas City Beacon

The Stowers Institute established a year-round satellite lab at the MBL in 2024.

Inside the sunlit corridors of Kansas City’s Stowers Institute for Medical Research, scientists are studying apple snails, silkworms, fruit flies and zebra fish.

Almost any organism that could shed light on how life works is a possible research subject for one of the 20 labs and more than 300 scientists housed at the institute. Likewise, almost any research question is up for grabs, whether or not it has a clear chance of curing a disease or leading to a new medication.

That’s because Jim and Virginia Stowers had something grander in mind when they gave their fortune to open the institute 25 years ago.

They hoped the biomedical research they funded would contribute to treatments and cures. But they believed an even more valuable contribution could be made if their scientists revealed the secrets of life itself.

“The more we understand about life,” the late Jim Stowers once said, “the more we can hope for life.” Read rest of the article here.

Source: At 25, Stowers Institute still searching for the secrets of life | The Kansas City Beacon