Sbarro Health Research Organization

The Sbarro Health Research Organization is a nonprofit charity committed to funding excellence in basic genetic research to cure and diagnose cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and other chronic illnesses and to foster the training of young doctors in a spirit of professionalism and humanism. SHRO researchers have completed research on new technologies designed to diagnose lung, ovarian, endometrial, breast and brain tumors as well as lymphomas. Their work with gene therapy has also led to new strategies to treat tumors of the lung and brain, and has led to over twenty patents. SHRO is dedicated to supporting scientific research aimed at finding cures for cancer, cardiovascular and other diseases by identifying their underlying molecular mechanisms. SHRO includes the Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine located at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA and an SHRO affiliated laboratory located at the University of Siena in Siena, Italy. Over 200 SHRO molecular biologists, geneticists, physicists, and chemists work to develop new methods to understand, diagnose and cure disease. In 1993, Antonio Giordano, M.D., Ph.D., founded the Sbarro Institute with a generous donation from Mario Sbarro, the Founder of the Sbarro restaurant chain, following Dr. Giordano’s discovery of the tumor suppressor gene pRb2. Initially named the Sbarro Institute, the research center was located at Thomas Jefferson University, where Dr. Giordano was a professor. When Dr. Giordano moved to Temple University in 2002, he and twenty fellow scientists forged a new, three-year alliance with Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Under the new arrangement, the original Sbarro Institute was renamed the Sbarro Health Research Organization, Inc. (SHRO), which includes the Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine at Temple and the SHRO-affiliated laboratory at the University of Siena in Siena, Italy.