Surgeon Gary Michelson and his wife Alya have donated $120 million to a Los Angeles-based public-private initiative focused on advancing research into immunology and vaccines.
The Michelsons’ gift to the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy (CIII) is split into three parts. The first $50 million will help establish a research center focused on “rapid vaccine development,” according to a UCLA release Tuesday. Another $50 million is set to go towards a separate research entity focused on “harnessing the microbiome.”
The remaining $20 million will be an endowment for research grants for “young scientists” working on new discoveries in the fields of immunotherapy, human immunology and vaccine discovery.
CIII aims to become a “biomedical invention factory to rapidly translate” discoveries into treatments, Michelson wrote in a public letter, and “attract the world’s top scientists, biotech leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors.” Immunotherapy has the potential to treat a range of chronic conditions from cancer to heart disease and obesity to Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, he added.
From L-R: Gary Michelson, Meyer Luskin, Eric Esrailian, Arie Belldegrun and Michael Milken (Credit: David Esquivel/UCLA)
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Michelson co-founded the institute alongside five other entrepreneurs, including Kite Pharma founder Arie Belldegrun and former Facebook president Sean Parker. Kite Pharma brought the first CAR-T therapy to market and was acquired by Gilead Sciences in 2017 for $11.9 billion in cash. Parker, the tech entrepreneur behind Napster and Facebook, is also known for starting the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. The other founders are Meyer Luskin, Eric Esrailian and Michael Milken.
Michelson, meanwhile, is a spinal surgeon who holds almost 1,000 patents and serves as chair of CIII’s board of directors.
At an event in June, Michelson described the traditional reluctance of academia to embrace the commercial world as “a mistake,” according to a separate UCLA release. He added that CIII is meant to act as a “nucleus for an entire ecosystem of biotech startups” and would ideally be “self-funded” in the future.
The state of California has also pledged $500 million to the public-private initiative, which is based in UCLA’s new research park, around two miles from the university’s Westwood campus.