On Jun. 24, 2015, Oregon Health & Science University announced it had met Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny’s $1 billion challenge by raising $500 million in less than two years to earn the Knights’ matching gift and set a fundraising record. Meeting the Knights’ $500 million fundraising challenge marks the largest documented challenge pledge to succeed, according to researchers with the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

With $1 billion in new funding, the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute will begin fast-track recruitment of about 25 of the world’s top researchers. These recruits will, in turn, hire an additional 225 to 275 scientists and physicians, forming a team focused on the detection of cancer, including the early biological changes in the body that signal a lethal cancer is beginning to develop. Catching the disease in these very early stages will unleash the full potential of precision cancer medicine. It will make it possible to detect cancer when it first starts and treat it when it’s most curable, with the fewest side effects and at the lowest cost.

These scientists will be given substantial financial support, so they can focus on discovery instead of spending time securing grants. With this expansion, OHSU will also move forward with construction of two buildings ― a state-of-the-art cancer research facility designed from the ground up to support a new model of combining scientific disciplines to speed progress and new cancer care clinics for expanded clinical trials that will translate the scientific discoveries made by the team into next-generation detection tests, tools and treatments.