And the plebs better be grateful: Billionaire Ludwig's estate donates $540 million for U.S. cancer research

The estate of the late American shipping magnate Daniel Ludwig on Monday donated a total of $540 million to six elite U.S. cancer research facilities, making one of the largest one-time gifts dedicated to combating the disease.

Ed McDermott, CEO of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, a non-profit organization founded by Ludwig to develop ways to prevent and treat cancer, said the donation will help researchers build upon recent advances at a time when funding for medical research has been dwindling.

"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," McDermott said. "More must be done in terms of funding to ensure continued progress in an era of shrinking global resources for research."

The money will be divided equally among "Ludwig Centers" already established at Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Stanford University and the University of Chicago.

MIT and Harvard both called the donations transformative, and MIT said the money would help scientists develop their research on metastasis, the process by which cancer cells spread from a primary tumor to distant sites in the body.

"Ludwig's generosity will support our efforts to answer two critical questions: how cancer spreads in the body and what we can do to stop it," MIT President L. Rafael Reif said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/06/us-usa-cancer-ludwig-idUSBREA0504Y20140106

And the plebs better be grateful: Billionaire Ludwig's estate donates $540 million for U.S. cancer research

And the plebs better be grateful: Billionaire Ludwig's estate donates $540 million for U.S. cancer research

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