The W. Alton Jones Cell Science Center

The original tax-free gift was accompanied by the institutional charter that use of the facility would be restricted forever to non-profit activities related to research and education on the biology of cells.

The objective was to provide a center in the peaceful setting of the Adirondack Mountains where experts in the fields of genetics, immunology, virology, insect physiology and other invertebrates unified by common interest in the art and science of culturing cells outside the body could come together, pool their ideas and techniques, and convey them to others.

Without sufficient resources to support legal action to retain ownership of the property and enforce the original non-profit charter and mission, the deed was relinquished.

Subsequently the SIVB agreed retroactively to relinquish enforcement of the "non-profit use only" stipulation of the original charter along with the earlier transfer of the deed to the property for a donation of $50,000 from the Adirondack Biomedical Institute, Inc. (Director, Dr. James Stevens).

Dr. Sato's mission was to build a financially independent world-class basic research and teaching institute in the Adirondack Mountains generally oriented around the applications of cell culture technologies to broad problems in human health and disease through translational biotechnology to industry and the clinic.

In 1996 the not-for-profit W. Alton Jones Cell Science Center, Inc. was dissolved and the assets, which included Upstate Biotechnology, Inc., were transferred to a newly incorporated non-for-profit entity, the Adirondack Biomedical Research Institute (ABRI), Inc.

[4] In 2000 the Ivy Foundation chaired by William C. Battle was established with a reported endowment of $7 million from funds from the closure of the Adirondack Biomedical Research Foundation, Inc. (formerly the W. Alton Jones Cell Science Center, Inc.) [7] that included Upstate Biotechnology, Inc.[8] Subsequent to the sale of the Upstate Group in 2005 the Ivy Foundation, listing Board of Directors as William C. Battle, Arthur Garson, Jr., William Black, Sheridan Snyder, Patricia J. Edgerton, Aaron Shatkin and Dr. Robert W. Battle, made a gift of $45 million to the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, the largest single gift in the history of the University.