Jon M. Huntsman and his family are donating $100 million to the battle against cancer and have raised an additional $51 million from businesses and philanthropies.
It is the largest contribution ever made to medical research, and the second-largest cash gift in the history of higher education in America, according to Huntsman spokesman Don Olsen.The grant is to fund a world-class cancer research and treatment facility - the Huntsman Cancer Institute - whose nine-story building will tower over University Hospital on the University of Utah campus. The donation was formally announced on Monday.
"It's our way of saying to the world, `Thank you for permitting a very ordinary family, and a very common individual from a common background . . . for the opportunity to build a global empire,' " Huntsman told the Deseret News.
In gratitude for that phenomenal success, the Huntsman family wants to return as much to society as it can, helping to defeat cancer, he added.
"The major significance of the Huntsman gift is that it will allow us to recruit a number of world-class, strongly cancer-focused researchers to the university to be the faculty of the developing institute," said Dr. Ray White, who left the Eccles Institute and became director of the fledgling Huntsman Cancer Institute in July 1994.
Until now, the institute's scientists and researchers have been housed in the basement of University Hospital and wherever else space could be found for them.
Construction will begin on the new center early next year, Huntsman said. It may be completed in 1998. The main focus will be on genetic research aimed at curing cancer. It will have two floors devoted to pediatric oncology.
"We certainly anticipate great breakthroughs and great scientific advancement," Huntsman said.
But it will be much more than acancer research center. It will treat patients, both physically and emotionally.
"Part of our facility will be where people with cancer can find the necessary makeup and wigs and clothing, so that they have the proper dignity and hope," added Huntsman.
The group's strategic research plan focuses on the earliest stages of cancer, said White during a telephone interview.
"Our hope is to learn enough about the earliest stages so that we can diagnose and treat at those stages, which of course prevents the later stages," he said. New technology allows researchers to search for and identify cancer precursors, he said.
"The thing that gives us so much optimism is that this is really the first time anyone will have been able to look at these precursor cells and determine their sensitivity to various drugs," White added. The institute may be able to devise treatments that can knock out the precursor cells before cancer develops, he said.
Over the next five to eight years, the institute expects to recruit 50 or more new faculty members, he said.
The new institute center, which will be part of the University of Utah, will be connected by an elevated walkway with other facilities such as University Hospital.
"It's just the right time in the history of cancer research to pull together now just the right group to make significant contributions." He is certain that the institute will make important advances.
U. President Arthur K. Smith said in a statement that university officials "are excited at the prospect of making these (research) advances, and we are grateful to Jon and Karen Huntsman and their family for their extraordinary act of philanthropy."
Among the contributors to the $51 million raised outside the Huntsman family are Galaxo-Welcome Inc.; Huntsman business partner and friend Kerry Packer, chairman of Australia's Consolidated Press Holding Corp.; Intermountain Health Care; the university; the state of Utah; and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Huntsman called the LDS Church contribution "probably the most meaningful gift" that the foundation could receive.