Bezos family pledges $10 million to Hutch for cancer research

The parents of Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos are taking the plunge into biomedical research. Jackie and Mike Bezos are pledging $10 million to Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to advance the study of immunotherapy to fight cancer.

Jackie Bezos described the gift this way:

We chose to support the Hutchinson Center because it is a world leader in immunotherapy, which wields the power of the immune system to reprogram the body's army of infection-fighting T cells to be laser focused on fighting a particular illness. The first target - and it's a big one - is cancer. But the potential for using immunotherapy to treat other diseases, including those of the autoimmune system, are tremendous.

Immunotherapy seeks to enhance or modify the the body's natural immune system to help it fight disease. The Bezos are structuring the gift as a challenge to encourage other grants. The Bezos' pledge of $10 million requires matching gifts totaling $10 million over a three-year period, ending Dec. 31, 2012, said Hutchinson spokeswoman Kristen Woodward.

The Bezos family gift is one of the top five gifts in the history of the Hutchinson Center. It's a direct gift from Jackie and Mike Bezos and is separate from the Bezos Family Foundation, which primarily supports education projects, Woodward said.

Hutchinson Center president Lee Hartwell said the Bezos family gift will help the center recruit top scientists, develop new immunological drugs and test them in clinical trials.

This summer Hutch researcher Cassian Yee successfully used a "human patient's cloned infection-fighting T cells as the sole therapy to put advanced melanoma tumors into long-term remission," according to the Hutch, which said Yee's team is now "expanding clinical trials that use T-cell therapy to treat advanced tumors."

Follow my updates on Twitter.

About Eric Engleman

ERIC ENGLEMAN is senior technology staff writer for TechFlash and the Puget Sound Business Journal, covering online retail giant Amazon.com. Engleman tracks Amazon's increasingly complex business, spanning ecommerce, Kindle, cloud computing, and more. He's been covering technology and other industries for the Business Journal since 2003.

READ FULL BIOGRAPHY

206-876-5430

@ericengleman

Recent Sponsor Posts

Seattle University Software Engineering

Chinwe Okeke (MSE’08) pursued her graduate degree while working as a developer and technical analyst for the Boeing Company. She picked the SU-MSE program for small class sizes and real world learning opportunities offered through the academic service-learning and capstone projects.

The MSE program at Seattle University is geared for working professionals with classes offered in the evenings. The program builds upon the computing experience of its students and offers courses in a variety of technical and management areas of software engineering, with an emphasis on teamwork and a disciplined approach to problem solving.

MORE INFORMATION

Marchex is Hiring!

Marchex is one of Seattle’s largest ad technology companies with 300+ employees providing call and click based performance marketing products, and managing over $100m in ad budget for tens of thousands of advertisers. Our customers range from local businesses to the Fortune 500.

Our talented and creative product engineering group is hiring.

If you are an innovative software design engineer interested in solving difficult problems at scale, across a wide array of technologies from Lucene to Hadoop to Asterisk and SIP then we’d love to hear from you!

Apply now.

MORE INFORMATION

Technology Tax Planning – Did You Take The Deduction?

Technology companies require professional advisors who can assist in all aspects of the business. The BDO Technology Practice provides a full range of services tailored to help address the changing needs of domestic and international companies. In addition to core audit and tax services, BDO professionals can assist technology companies with:

· Revenue recognition

· Business combination accounting

· R&D tax credits

· Compensation and benefits

· Business valuations

Backed by 38 national offices and an international network in 110 countries, we have the domestic and global footprint to serve growing technology companies. Contact sphilpott@bdo.com (audit partner), mreeves@bdo.com (audit partner), psmith@bdo.com (tax partner), tzambito@bdovaluation.us.com (valuation), tfiscus@bdo.com, Director, 206.624.2020

MORE INFORMATION