On Jul. 28, 2014, Oregon Health & Science University’s (OHSU) Knight Cancer Institute announced it has received a $100 million gift to fuel its ambitious vision to stop cancer in its tracks.

A donor, who wishes to remain unnamed, pledged the funds as part of OHSU’s unprecedented $1 billion campaign to support the Knight Cancer Institute’s initiative to revolutionize the early detection and treatment of cancer. The gift comes less than one year into the two-year fundraising effort. It is the largest private donation to the campaign to date and one of the four largest pledges in OHSU’s history.

The Knight Cancer Challenge was launched in 2013 after Nike Co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, pledged $500 million for cancer research if OHSU raised an equal amount by February 2016. The Knight Cancer Challenge was launched in 2013 after Nike Co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, pledged $500 million for cancer research if OHSU raised an equal amount by February 2016.

The $100 million anonymous gift will be used to support a full range of Knight Cancer Institute initiatives, including hiring 20 to 30 top scientists and their teams to collaborate on improving methods to identify cancer at its earliest and most curable stage. The $1 billion investment will enable these scientists to focus on discovery and moving the most promising new detection methods and treatments from the laboratory to clinical trials as quickly as possible.

The early detection initiative builds upon Knight Cancer Institute Director Brian Druker, M.D.,’s pioneering research that changed the direction of cancer treatment from toxic, non-specific chemotherapies to highly targeted drugs that zero in on cancer without harming healthy cells. He spearheaded this paradigm shift by contributing to the development of Gleevec®, a targeted treatment for chronic myeloid leukemia, turning a previously lethal cancer into a manageable disease.