The Sbarro family brought their pizza-making know-how to the United States, set up shop, and grew their fast food franchise nationally and then throughout the world. The Sbarro Health Research Organization (SHRO), initially funded by the Sbarro family, seems to be emulating this model, only with scientific research. Antonio Giordano, director of the Center of Biotechnology at Temple University as well as the SHRO-funded Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine (ICRMM), both in Philadelphia, has been establishing a network of affiliated labs throughout the world to leverage cultural differences and untapped talent for ICRMM projects. An impetus for the approach was to side-step bureaucracy and costs associated with growing an organization within its home base, he says. The approach also keeps talented researchers in their native countries to build up local science, says the Naples, Italy native.
We "target young investigators in the early stage of their careers, ...