Texas Cancer Center Receives $150 Million Gift From United Arab Emirates

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Jan 20th 2011 at 10:04PM

Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates, is giving a huge donation to a U.S. hospital. The Houston Chronicle reports that the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center will receive $150 million. the largest donation ever given to an institution in the Texas Medical Center. The gift will fund a building and research for M.D. Anderson's Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy. Outgoing hospital President Dr. John Mendelsohn will co-lead the institute. He says that the gift was a response to M.D. Anderson's treatment of many patients from the United Arab Emirates.

The donation honors the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates for more than 30 years and the father of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The personalized cancer therapy institute building will be named after the late president and the institute itself after the current president. A pancreatic cancer research center will be be created with the gift after another son, Sheikh Ahmed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

The gifts will help the center make strides in personalized cancer therapy, allowing genetic sequencing of cancer tumors. A ceremonial signing of the gift agreement was done at the Khalifa Foundation in Abu Dhabi earlier this week. Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan is the world's fifth-richest monarch, with $15 billion, according to the Forbes list.

Forbes reports that this is the third gift in the past four years from the UAE, following a $150 million to the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, and an undisclosed "major" sum to Johns Hopkins Medicine to help construct The Johns Hopkins Hospital new cardiovascular and critical care tower.

Tags: abu dhabi, philanthropy, united arab emirates

Filed under: Big Givers

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jmg62 Feb 21st 2011 4:10PM

I think it's great that $150 million was given to the Univ. of Texas Anderson Cancer Center. To enhance their ability to fight cancer with this gift is the greatest gift a nation can give to one of our States. I hope the giving continues in hopes of success stories more often then not.