$20 Million Grant Will Allow Boost In Memorial Sloan-Kettering Research

New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center is one of six institutes that has been selected to receive a $20 million grant for cancer research from the Ludwig Fund. The grant, one of the largest earmarked for cancer research the hospital has ever received, will speed the research process, researchers said yesterday.

The gift from the Ludwig Fund, created by the late American billionaire Daniel Ludwig, will be used for immunology research and will ensure annual research funds of about $2 million.

The chairman of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Immunology Program, Dr. James Allison, whose work focuses on enabling the immune system to recognize and fight cancer cells, will head the hospital's new Ludwig Center. "This money will greatly enhance our ability to bring strategies for mobilizing the immune system to bear on the cancer problem," Dr. Allison said.

Progressing to human from animal testing "usually involves applying for an NIH grant, which would take a year to get it — if you ever got it," Dr. Allison said. "This money allows us to immediately start with large-scale experimentation and will provide a pre-clinical foundation to move into human trials."

With less government funding available in recent years, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center is looking toward private funding more often, a spokeswoman said, although the bulk of its funding still comes from the government.

"Public funding is not drying up, but it's staying static," the executive director of the Ludwig Institute, Dr. Andrew Simpson, said. "Private philanthropy can give leverage to see particular types of work done. This money can serve as a catalyst to accelerate what everyone wants: translating basic science to benefit patients."

"This is money that's not tied to a particular project," a spokeswoman for the Ludwig Institute, Sarah White, said. "It gives the center directors the ability to move quite rapidly as ideas change in science."

The Ludwig Institute encourages collaboration between the six cancer research centers it has established. The other institutions awarded the $20 million grant are Dana-Farber/Harvard

Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the University of Chicago.

"On your own you can make a great discovery, but science becomes collective as it becomes more practical," Dr. Simpson said. "We are translating basic discoveries into practical benefits."

Mr. Ludwig, who made his fortune in the shipping business, died in 1992, leaving no heirs. He donated most of his money to cancer research.