'Idea Man' Paul Allen leaves be­hind plan to un­scram­ble hu­man im­munol­o­gy

“You have a cer­tain num­ber of dreams in your life that you want to ful­fill,” Mi­crosoft co-founder Paul Allen said in a 2011 in­ter­view dis­cussing his plans to launch car­go, and even­tu­al­ly, peo­ple in­to or­bit. Now one of his oth­er dreams — to de­code the im­mune sys­tem — has been set in mo­tion, a few months fol­low­ing his death in Oc­to­ber.

On Wednes­day, his non-prof­it med­ical re­search en­ti­ty Allen In­sti­tute, which al­ready hous­es di­vi­sions ded­i­cat­ed to brain and cel­lu­lar sci­ence, re­vealed that the late phil­an­thropist had set aside $125 mil­lion for an im­munol­o­gy unit to de­crypt the del­i­cate bal­anc­ing act the hu­man im­mune sys­tem plays in health and in sick­ness.

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