A friendship with a cancer doctor, who treated his nephew as well as friends (like Steve Jobs), led Oracle's entrepreneurial founder to give $200 million to establish the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC.

The physician, David B. Agus, professor at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and USC Viterbi School of Engineering, will lead the institute, which will bring both holistic and mainstream disciplines together to fight the disease.

Ellison's gift, said Agus, “will enable us to change our very approach to cancer research, treatment and prevention," noting that it will allow researchers to "create a new paradigm, where patients and researchers have the opportunity to interact, and where research is not taking place in an isolated silo."

This shift in approach, away from the traditional categorization of cancer by organ, is critical, Agus believes. “To me, cancer is a verb: You don’t get cancer, you’re either in a well state or a cancer state, so my job is to change you from a cancerous state to a healthy state,” he told Bloomberg News.

The donation is the largest for cancer fighting and treatment in USC's history, tying with the 2011 David and Dana Dornsife gift to the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, according to a USC news statement and the Daily Trojan.

Ellison’s gift was announced last week at the Rebels with a Cause fundraiser for the USC Center for Applied Molecular Medicine.

“Tonight I’m announcing a gift of $200 million to the University of Southern California to build an interdisciplinary center for cancer research headed by Dr. David Agus," Ellison said at the gala. "The new Institute will invite mathematicians, physicists and other scientists to collaborate with cancer researchers from the traditional disciplines of medicine and biology. We believe the interdisciplinary approach will yield up new insights currently hidden in existing patient data.”

USC President C. L. Max Nikias said the gift was "as inspirational as it is momentous" and noted that it will be a "dynamic force for change in how we approach cancer treatment and prevention.”

The donation will be invested in the construction in West Los Angeles of a home for the new institute, containing research laboratories focused on clinical breakthroughs that improve cancer treatment through technology.

It will also house an interactive care clinic for patients.

The institute will bring together researchers from diverse fields, including health and wellness, and also physics, biology, math and engineering.

“There will be clinics, engineering labs, think tanks, and kids will be able to go on tours all day because we need to excite the next generation,” Agus told Bloomberg. “We’ll also have artists and chefs in residence to get people to understand cancer and the emotion around it. It will be the first of its kind.”

Agus now leads the USC Center for Applied Molecular Medicine (CAMM) at the USC Norris Westside Cancer Center in Beverly Hills, and on the USC Health Sciences Campus in Los Angeles.

At CAMM, the focus is on ways to use the body's own proteins and genomics to fight cancer, conducting both research and clinical trials aimed at molecular targeting that disrupts cancer at a cellular and molecular level – an approach that leans heavily on individualization of cancer therapy.

Ellison's is the latest multi-million dollar gift given to fight cancer. Former president of Facebook and Napster founder, Sean Parker, made news in April with a $250 million gift for a research institute to study immune-system approaches to fighting the disease.

In March, Michael Bloomberg and Sidney Kimmel spearheaded a $125 million drive to form an immunotherapy-focused institute at Johns Hopkins.