US cancer research receives $540 million
pharmafile | January 7, 2014 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Cancer, US, licr, ludwig
Six facilities in the US have received a total of $540 million from the estate of an American businessman in one of the biggest single donations to cancer research.
The centres, established in 2006 by the charitable operations of late billionaire Daniel Ludwig, are located at Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Stanford University and the University of Chicago.
The facilities are involved in a wide range of research areas, including genomic mapping, metastasis, immunotherapeutic treatment and rarer cancers.
Co-director of the Johns Hopkins arm, Bert Vogelstein, said the financial injection would allow the six centres to “expand and amplify their efforts in perpetuity”.
He added: “Ludwig puts great faith in its scientists by providing ongoing investment that allows them to expedite research and take risks – the only way to make truly breakthrough discoveries.”
Vogelstein’s counterpart at the Harvard centre, George Demetri, said that researchers would now be free to pursue a new project “regardless of how long it may take or the size of the eventual patient population it may benefit”.
The financial boost arrives at a time when funding for medical research in the US is becoming increasingly difficult to secure. According to Bloomberg, less than 10% of applications to government funding bodies are successful.
The non-profit Ludwig Cancer Research was first established in 1971. Since then, the philanthropist’s estate has contributed a total of $2.5 billion to medical science, through the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR), its six US academic centres and affiliated bodies around the world.
Ludwig was one of the most successful businessmen of his time, with interests in areas as diverse as shipping, farming and luxury hotels. In 1982 he topped the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans, ten years before his death in New York from heart failure.
LICR president, Ed McDermott, said: “Never before has the cancer community had the knowledge and tools to probe so deeply into understanding cancer and discovering new ways to defeat it.”
He added: “Providing reliable, long-term support to scientists fosters high impact, innovative research and must remain a priority.”
Just one week into the new year, Ludwig’s estate has already topped 2013’s biggest charitable contribution to cancer research: the $500 million pledged by Nike co-founder Philip Knight and his wife Penelope to the Oregon Health and Science University.
Hugh McCafferty
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