The real estate section of today’s New York Times featuresOrlando’s Medical City in Lake Nona, an emerging research hub that was founded in part with Sanford-Burnham’s  campus:

As soon as the [University of Central Florida] medical school was approved in 2006, the Burnham Institute (now called the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute after a recent $50 million donation by the billionaire T. Denny Sanford) chose Lake Nona for its new home. The building, which opened last year, contains one of the country’s few robotic high-throughput screening centers — machines that can run a huge number of biological tests very quickly.

In addition to Sanford-Burnham and the University of Central Florida’s College of Medicine, Lake Nona’s Medical City currently includes MD Anderson Cancer Center Orlando. The hub will also soon welcome the University of Florida Academic and Research Center, a new Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center and Nemours Children’s Hospital.

While Medical City has been a boon for economic development, it’s also been great for scientific collaboration:

“A lot of Sanford-Burnham researchers have similar interests with ours,” said Roger Oxendale, the chief executive of Nemours. “A lot of the questions they’ll be asking about diabetes and obesity, they’ll be asking with respect to childhood diseases. I think we haven’t realized the potential of these partnerships.”

For a more complete history of Medical City at Lake Nona, read the entire New York Times article, “Orlando’s Newest Attraction is Medical”.