Penn Medicine received a $120 million gift from Catherine and Anthony Clifton

Penn Medicine received a $120 million gift from Catherine and Anthony Clifton, and will rename its new, $1.6 billion Pavilion at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania the Clifton Center for Medical Breakthroughs, the Philadelphia nonprofit announced Wednesday.

Catherine Clifton, an urban planner and public health expert, has been a member of the Penn Medicine board of directors since 2010. She is the daughter of Comcast Corp. founder Ralph Roberts. Her brother, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, has also made significant gifts to Penn Medicine.

“I’m just so overwhelmed to know that the world’s premier academic medical institution and its state-of-the-art hospital will forever bear our name. It’s incredible. Anthony and I are immensely proud to support this newly named Center for Medical Breakthroughs,” Catherine Clifton told a crowd in the hospital’s lobby.

The money will be used in part to support Penn’s efforts to translate scientific discoveries into treatments, with an emphasis on first-in-human trials, said Jonathan Epstein, the newly appointed dean of Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine.

“That’s been our sweet spot, where we’ve been able to have an outsized impact,” Epstein said in an interview after the announcement of the Cliftons’ gift.

Since the pavilion, now the Clifton Center, opened in October 2021, doctors have performed more than 1,720 organ transplants there and served more than 350,000 patients in studies like CAR-T cell therapy for glioblastoma and MRI techniques for prediction of coma recovery, Penn said.

The Cliftons donated $1 million to Penn Medicine in 2020 to support research on faculty well-being to mitigate physician stress and burnout.

During her remarks, Catherine Clifton recalled how her father, who died in 2015, suggested that they join the Penn Medicine board together. “That decision and the opportunity to serve with him has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my life,” she said.

Clifton said she received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in city and regional planning from Penn and a master’s degree in public health from Harvard University. “I’ve always been interested in the delivery of care, particularly how the physical and social environment impacts patients,” she said.

Anthony Clifton works as a consultant and mentor for small-business owners and senior managers, Penn said. Previously, he served as chairman and CEO of Review Publishing, which operated newspapers including the South Philly Review, the Philadelphia Weekly, and the Atlantic City Weekly.

Penn said the Cliftons’ gift is one of the largest ever to name an inpatient facility.

With their $120 million gift, the Cliftons join the ranks of major donors to Penn Medicine. Others include Raymond and Ruth Perelman, who gave $225 million in 2011 and had Penn’s medical school named after them. Penn’s cancer center was named in honor of Leonard and Madlyn Abramson, who donated $100 million in 1997 and another $40 million after that.

More recently, Stewart and Judy Colton gave a total of $60 million in 2021 and 2022 for the Colton Center for Autoimmunity, and Mindy and Jon Gray gave $55 million to establish the Basser Cancer Interception Institute to target hereditary cancers at their earliest stages.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with comment and additional detail.