The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute announced last Friday that it had received a $16.5 million donation to fund cancer research, marking the largest gift from an individual in the Harvard-affiliated institute’s 58-year history.

The institute’s chief scientific officer, Barrett J. Rollins, said the donation will be used to research proteins and their functions at a soon-to-be-created center named for the donors, Jack Blais, an optical coating entrepreneur who has been a trustee of Dana-Farber since 2002, and his wife, Shelley.

In addition to Friday’s donation, the couple has given $13.5 million to the institute since 2000. And this summer, the couple paid $15 million to obtain the naming rights for the New England Patriots’ training facility, which they rechristened the Dana-Farber Field House.

Researchers at the Blais Center for Proteomics will study proteins to better understand the way normal and cancerous cells function. The donation will also be used to fund the purchase of several mass spectrometers, which can identify the composition of samples, and to recruit experts in proteomics and computational biology.

“The expanding field of protein research, combined with the diligent work of the Dana-Farber scientists, truly has the potential to unlock the mysteries of cancer in our lifetime and to provide the hope of cures for cancer patients worldwide,” Blais said in a press release from the institute.

Rollins said the gift “will help place the institute in the forefront of protein analysis as it applies to the understanding and treatment of cancer.”

“We and Jack think that this technology platform will be essential in translating new knowledge about cancer into clinically effective treatments,” Rollins said.

The institute is one of 18 teaching hospitals and research centers affiliated with Harvard Medical School, according to the school’s website. And Dana-Farber has been rated the fourth best hospital for cancer care in the country by U.S. News & World Report for five straight years.

Rollins also said that an assistant professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School, Jarrod A. Marto, has been hired to direct the new center.

One of Dana-Farber’s top proteomics experts, John Quackenbush, a professor of biostatics and computational biology, said his team of researchers at the institute is already analyzing large-scale data of thousands of proteins from several sources and designing models that will allow them to determine protein function and interactions.

“What we’re really trying to do is to capture [protein] information and leverage it to understand the biological system,” Quackenbush said. “The kinds of techniques that we’re talking about have broad applications, from looking at malaria to seeing how plants grow. We want to understand protein function and, more importantly, dysfunction in the context of diseases.”