The University of Colorado announced this week a five-year, $200 million investment to launch a new institute focused on gene and cellular therapies.

The Gates Institute is the product of a joint investment by the university’s Anschutz Medical Campus and the Gates Frontiers Fund.

Researchers and scientists from the school “will now have a place to develop cell and gene therapeutics more effectively,” the university said in a news release. The institute’s new executive sees it as “a way to extend the successes of cellular therapy in cancer to diseases of the skin, eyes, heart and joints, to name a few.”

“The Gates Institute will make it possible for our faculty to achieve the vast potential of cell and gene therapies,” John J. Reilly Jr., the dean of the University of Colorado School of Medicine and vice chancellor for health affairs at CU Anschutz, said in a statement.

The new institute will build upon work from two other Gates efforts, a center for regenerative medicine and a biomanufacturing facility, according to the university. Reilly said CU Anschutz “will build on that foundation so our scientists can develop a new generation of therapies that allow our clinicians to offer hope to those facing serious disease.”

Terry Fry, whom the university described as a “world-renowned researcher,” will be the institute’s first executive director, in addition to his roles elsewhere. His research focuses on “advancing the next generation of CAR-T immunotherapies, reprogramming a patient’s T-cells to find and kill cancer cells.”

The Gates Frontiers Fund is named for Charles C. Gates, a Colorado-based philanthropist and businessman. The goal of the fund and its two trustees, Gates’ children Diane Gates Wallach and John Gates, is “to more swiftly move scientific discoveries from the lab to the clinic.”