Around the time William and Lillian Fishman were launching the La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation, David Brenner was entering the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. Fifty years later, a lot has changed. The Foundation is now Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute. Brenner is a renowned physician-scientist specializing in gastroenterology and President and CEO of Sanford Burnham Prebys. And the pursuit of science and medicine has transformed, not just in terms of progress and achievements between 1976 and 2026, but in how biomedical research is fundamentally supported and sustained.
“For most of the last century and until quite recently, basic research – the kind that generates the discoveries that become new drugs, treatments and therapies – was primarily the province of government funding agencies, most notably the National Institutes of Health (NIH),” Brenner shared with GB Magazine. “Only the NIH was expansive enough to invest in promising but not yet proven research. Because that happened, often dramatically, the United States became the unrivaled leader in original, world-changing science.”
The NIH is still the largest funder of biomedical research in the U.S., but uncertainty and concern abound. Scientific priorities have been re-ordered. New and continuing grant proposals are increasingly rebuffed, ignored or simply slow-walked into oblivion. Yet science, says Brenner, cannot stand still. “Pathogenic viruses do not stop evolving or new ones emerging because researchers lack the resources to study them. Diseases only become more daunting if you stop looking for ways to beat them.”
So Brenner and his colleagues across San Diego and beyond have deepened their interest and faith in an older remedy: philanthropy from individuals, groups and foundations. “In 1902, the Rockefeller Foundation spent more than $1 million in medical research compared to $50,000 by the Federal Hygienic Laboratory, predecessor to the NIH,” Brenner said.
Today, there are nearly 700,000 private foundations and nonprofit organizations in the United States. Approximately 10 percent support or perform scientific research, averaging $30 billion in grants and other funding per year, approaching NIH funding levels. “This fact sets U.S. science apart from other countries where scientific philanthropy is relatively rare. Here, it is common to read about an alumnus of a research university or the recipient of a life-changing medical treatment showing their appreciation in the form of a gift or donation, paying back to pay forward.
“Of course, philanthropic giving for biomedical research is not a substitute for steadfast and appropriate funding support from the NIH and other government agencies.” But, said Brenner, philanthropic funding of biomedical research has become ever-more critical because foundations, private organizations and individuals tend to be more flexible, more accepting of risk and more open to innovation and experimentation. More than industry, private philanthropy embraces a longer payoff horizon.
As Winston Churchill once observed, “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give;” a reminder that philanthropy is not only an investment in discovery, but in humanity itself.
