A new 'personalized medicine' institute hopes to seed a biomedical cluster and attract scientists. The private non-profit Ignite Institute will be based in Virginia's Fairfax County at a 27,000-square-metre facility to be built in part with $150 million of county bond money that Ignite will begin repaying after 5 years. The state of Virginia and Inova Health System will each provide $25 million. Ignite plans to employ 415 staff within 5 years, including 350 researchers in areas such as cardiovascular and metabolic disease. Graduate students will attend through partnerships with neighbouring universities. Ignite chief executive Dietrich Stephan says that affiliation with a health-care system will make personalized-medicine advances swiftly available to patients.