Phil Knight, the co-founder and chairman of Nike, is donating $500 million to the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) to help fund a research that focuses on the early detection of cancer.
The $500 million donation Phil Knight and his wife Penny made was added to a previous $500 million amount that the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute has already raised, bringing the research budget up to $1 billion.
OHSU Knight Cancer Institute director Brian Druker, MD acknowledges the developments in how cancer is being treated today, saying these treatments have become less toxic and have shown more accurate results. To Druker, however, the process of detecting cancer has not changed.
"Without better, earlier detection, and a full understanding of cancer's origins in the body, the promise of precision cancer medicine cannot be realized," explains Druker.
That is why the campaign for the research was launched in 2013 and is, up to now, still receiving gifts and donations.
After their $100 million donation to the study in 2008, the Knights made their challenge pledge in September 2013. They were inspired by the Institute's goal to find a more revolutionized way of detecting a disease that has caused deaths in so many.
"Penny and I have total confidence in Brian Druker and the entire OHSU Knight Cancer Institute team to put a stop to a disease that touches each of our lives," says Phil Knight.
Knight adds that he has seen, in the last 22 months, how people of vision can focus on a single goal to make things possible.
Apart from $500 million from the Knights, the largest donation received by the research team since its First launch in 2013 is $200 million from the State of Oregon. From a single donor, the largest is $100 million from Gert Boyle, chairman of Columbia Sportswear.
Up to the past few weeks, more donations have been coming in, totaling to around $20 million. Fairly significant amounts came from Cambia Health Foundation; Pat and Stephanie Kilkenny of San Diego, California; Mark Wolfson and Jasper Ridge Partners; Intel Corporation; Wayne D. Kuni and Joan E. Kuni Foundation; the Blumenfeld family of New York City; the Wendt family of Klamath Falls, Oregon; and Consumer Cellular.
Five countries and every state in America also made their donations to the research, bringing the number of donors to more or less 10,000, half of which have only made donations to OHSU for the first time.
Most patients are only diagnosed with lethal cancers when the disease has already widely spread out - when it is too late. With enough funds and a team of dedicated experts, Knight is hopeful that OHSU may be able to change that.
