Table of Contents
Charles Butt Gives $1 Million to New Frontiers Campaign
Seed money will help establish new Research Center for Metabolic Diseases
Charles Butt, chairman of H-E-B, has personally committed $1 million to the New Frontiers Campaign to help Texans fight diabetes and other metabolic diseases.
His gift, combined with H-E-B’s $1 million campaign contribution in 2002, will provide the seed money to create a new Research Center for Metabolic Diseases at The Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases (IMM).
“These two generous gifts provide us with the resources to begin recruiting a truly superb scientist to lead our investigations into the genetic and proteomic mechanisms behind metabolic diseases,” said
James T. Willerson, M.D., president of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and founder of the IMM.
The new research center will target diseases like obesity and Cushing’s Syndrome, Willerson said, but will focus primarily on non-insulin dependent or adult-onset diabetes.
Over 18 million people in the United States alone have diabetes, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. At least one million reside in Texas, though the state’s health department estimates there are an additional 500,000 undiagnosed cases.
Diabetes, a disease in which the body lacks the ability to properly use sugar from the blood, often compromises the immune system and can lead to other complications like heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, kidney disease and blindness.
Through the human genetics research center, IMM scientists already have identified genes that contribute to the risk of developing non-insulin dependent (type II) diabetes. Willerson said they also plan to explore the potential of stem cells to treat type I diabetes mellitus, or juvenile diabetes.
“We have an opportunity to build a world-class center in metabolic disease research here, and with Charles Butt’s and H-E-B’s help, we shall do it,” he said.
Butt is a native Texan and a member of the UT Health Science Center Development Board. “Each time I come into contact with the leadership of the health science center, I am energized by the optimism they express about conquering these diseases that have plagued Texans for so long and continue to be issues for our state today,” he said.
Like its chairman, H-E-B has a keen interest in the state’s health care needs. “We serve all income areas, and metabolic diseases have a major impact throughout, so it is particularly heartening to see people of the health science center’s caliber targeting this area of research so aggressively,” he said.
Butt took over his father’s position as president of H-E-B in 1971. Under his leadership the company has grown to be one of the largest privately owned companies in the United States.
Headquartered in the historic U.S. Arsenal for Western Texas (1857) in San Antonio, H-E-B has more 300 stores across Texas and Mexico, including seven Central Market locations in Texas. Through its pharmacies, the supermarket chain provides disease management programs in a number of Texas cities to help individuals in local communities monitor and treat chronic conditions like diabetes.
H-E-B contributes 5 percent of its pre-tax earnings each year to worthy causes, including public education, health care, social services, recreation and the arts, and is the nation’s largest retail sponsor of food banks, giving major support to those organizations across Texas and in northern Mexico.
The company also gave $300,000 to the UT School of Public Health at Houston to establish the H-E-B Fellowships in Childhood Immunization, a program in collaboration with the Immunization Bureau of the City of Houston Department of Health and Human Services to improve the awareness and level of childhood immunizations in the Houston community. The school recently selected its first three H-E-B Fellows.
In addition to his involvement at the health science center, Butt has served on the coordinating board and as a member of the Board of Overseers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
He was founding chairman of the UT Austin Marine Science Institute’s Advisory Council and has served as a director of the Board of Associates of Harvard Business School and the San Antonio World Affairs Council. He was named Mr. South Texas in 1996, and in 2001 he received the Aguila Azteca, the Mexican government’s highest award to an individual who is not a Mexican citizen.
The New Frontiers Campaign, led by Beth Robertson and Ben Love, is a $200 million fund-raising effort to build and equip a new home for the IMM and to recruit and support additional world-class scientists. As of February 2004, the health science center has received more than $155 million for the campaign. After breaking ground on its new site in September 2003, the institute is focused now on raising funds for recruitment and research expansion.
— By Amber Buckley, Development