The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, one of Harvard Medical School’s teaching hospitals, has received a $20 million grant to establish a research center that will focus on the development of new cancer drugs.

The gift, announced yesterday, is a part of a larger philanthropic effort by the Virginia and D. K. Ludwig Fund for Cancer Research. Five other academic research institutions received grants from the Ludwig Fund to found similar centers. Dana-Farber has appointed George D. Demetri, an associate professor of medicine specializing in translational research, to lead the Ludwig Center at Dana-Farber.

Demetri said yesterday that the grants are significant because they afford scientists a relatively high degree of freedom.“We have the option to drive the focus of the research,” Demetri said. He said he is most interested in developing new cancer drugs and targeting “signaling pathways that go awry” in cancer patients.

“Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is recognized throughout the world for its development of new therapies for cancer,” Lloyd Old, chair of the Ludwig Fund Trustees, said in a statement released by Dana-Farber yesterday. “Dr. George Demetri has made outstanding contributions to this tradition by successfully linking the strengths of the laboratory, the clinic and the pharmaceutical industry to forge novel and effective cancer therapies.”

Demetri called the interests of the directors of the six centers “quite complementary.” Stanford University’s Ludwig Center will focus on the role of stem cells in cancer treatment, and the Ludwig Center at Johns Hopkins will focus on the genetics of cancer.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and the University of Chicago will also establish Ludwig Centers through the grants. The gift comes at a time when federal funding for cancer research is flat-lining, according to Demetri. He added that because of inflation, the lack of growth seems like a decrease.

Demetri said that the Ludwig money, and the relatively loose restrictions that accompany it, should make it easier for young researchers to get grants and work together.

—Staff writer Laurence H. M. Holland can be reached at lholland@fas.harvard.