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.

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