Phil and Penny Knight pledge $2 billion to OHSU for cancer research

Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, plan to donate $2 billion to Oregon Health & Science University, the institution’s leaders announced Thursday.

OHSU officials say it’s the largest single donation given to a college in the country, exceeding the $1.8 billion given by Michael Bloomberg to Johns Hopkins in 2018.

The largesse comes a decade after Knight, who is Oregon’s wealthiest man, and his wife gave $500 million to OHSU on the condition that they match dollar-for-dollar in two years.

“Penny and Phil, there are no words that can adequately express our gratitude,” said Dr. Brian Druker at a gathering Thursday to announce the donation. “You remind us that we can never forget that this fight is personal.”

Gov. Tina Kotek told a cheering crowd that the historic gift would launch a new, ambitious future for OHSU.

“For OHSU, for Portland and for Oregon, there will always be the time before today and after today,” she said.

The gift will support the Knight Institute’s search for new cancer cures and will allow patients to receive comprehensive help, from early diagnosis and treatment to help with nutrition, insurance guidance, symptom management, and survivorship care.

The gift will be made over 10 years.

Druker said with the magnitude of the donation, the Knight Cancer Institute would become a self-governed institution within OHSU, with its own board of governors. He said this allows the institute to hire faculty, set its own compensation rates and compete nationally for top cancer research talent.

In December, Druker told OPB that a lack of strategic vision at OHSU and his inability to offer promising researchers reasonable salaries had influenced his decision to step down as the Knight Institute’s director.

On Thursday, he said he had agreed to return as the institute’s “inaugural president.”

Druker is a cancer researcher known worldwide for his role in the discovery of Imatinib, a drug that turned a universally fatal form of leukemia into a survivable illness. The discovery led to a new class of cancer drugs and earned him the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, among the highest honors in research science.

Druker said the gift will support roughly 180 faculty positions.

“The Knights have been adamant that they have supported research and they want to continue to support research,” he said.

Beyond supporting the research mission, Druker said OHSU will use the record-breaking gift to improve the experience cancer patients have during their diagnosis, treatment and recovery.

The U.S. health care system, he said, forces patients to take on an enormous amount of work to manage their own care — finding specialists, arranging travel, negotiating with insurance. With this new funding, the goal is to provide a navigator to every patient at the Knight Cancer Institute to simplify the process of getting treatment, Druker said.

“Our expectation is that over the next five years the numbers of cancer patients we’ll see very well could double,” he said.

The money comes at a delicate time for OHSU. The Trump administration has moved to significantly limit funding given out by the National Institutes of Health and terminated hundreds of grants.

Many higher education advocacy groups, as well as Oregon and other states, have sued to block those cuts from taking effect in a series of lawsuits. Two such cases have been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Even before the federal government took aim at funding for research, OHSU has been facing financial uncertainty. The organization has lost about $100 million over the past two fiscal years, laid off hundreds of people and had their credit rating downgraded after several years of operating losses.

Druker said the gift gives OHSU some insulation from federal cuts to research and Medicaid that the state has warned will gravely weaken Oregon’s health care system overall.

“We’re just so grateful, not only for the generosity, but also the timing,” he said.

Two of Druker’s long-time patients attended the announcement Thursday.

Judy Orem was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia, or CML, in 1995. In 1998, she was told she had no more than a year to live when she joined Druker’s first clinical trial of Imatinib.

Rob Shick was diagnosed with CML 20 years ago, and credits Druker’s discovery with saving his life.

“Phil Knight has always invested in winners,” Shick said. “Judy and I are proof, and so many tens and tens of thousands of other patients, that [Druker] is a winner.”