Tisch Gift to Cancer Center Sets Record

Duke Medical Center has received a $10-million gift from the Preston Robert Tisch family of New York to support cancer research at the Brain Tumor Center at Duke and the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center. The gift, the single largest ever received by the cancer center, was announced just a month before Tisch, chair of Loews Corporation and chair and co-owner of the New York Giants football team, died of a brain tumor.

Of the $10-million gift, half will be used to fund research on new brain-tumor drugs and to support brain-tumor clinical trials. It will help to extend the "translational" research program that Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure created with Duke in 2002 to accelerate potentially life-saving drugs from the laboratory to the clinic.

The other $5 million will be used to create the Preston Robert Tisch Cancer Investigators' Fund, which will be used to recruit promising cancer researchers to Duke. The medical center will contribute an additional $5 million toward the Investigators' Fund.

In recognition of the gift, the Brain Tumor Center at Duke, which currently treats more than 2,000 patients from around the world, will be renamed the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke. Tisch's son, Steven, will serve on the center's board.