A Special Announcement from Alya and Dr. Gary K. Michelson
California Institute for Immunology & Immunotherapy (CIII), UCLA Research Park (formerly The Westside Pavilion)
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
There are rare occasions when philanthropy can not only change lives, but the trajectory of human life itself.
One such occasion is upon us now. It is an opportunity so extraordinary that it brings together the most innovative minds in science and philanthropy in partnership with the State of California and one of the world’s top-ranked research universities and hospital systems. Our shared goal is to end disease as we know it within our lifetimes.
This is why Alya and I are donating $120 million at this time to help launch the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy (CIII), which will anchor the beautiful new UCLA Research Park on the site of the former Westside Pavilion Mall. Once open, it will be the crown jewel of Westwood.
[caption id="attachment_20784" align="alignnone" width="600"] Alya and Gary Michelson outside of UCLA Research Park, future home to the California Institute of Immunology and Immunotherapy[/caption]
It has been the honor of my life to have partnered in this nearly decade-long endeavor with a “dream team” of visionary philanthropists: Meyer Luskin, Eric Esrailian, M.D., Arie Belldegrun, M.D., Michael Milken, and Sean Parker.
Immunology – the study of the human immune system – holds extraordinary potential to unlock the mysteries of the human body and revolutionize healthcare in ways we can only begin to imagine. It is a way to make a difference for all of humanity on a fundamental, molecular level.
Not long ago, if you had asked a physician what the immune system did, the answer would have been, “It fights infections.” Only recently have we learned the true potential of our own immune systems.
Immunotherapy has led to seemingly ‘miracle’ treatments for what were previously incurable cancers. Now, with a single injection, we can vaccinate people with leukemias and lymphomas and cure them.
Beyond immunotherapy’s promise to prevent, treat, and cure disease, it holds the key to abate the ravages of aging, and provide a lasting treatment for chronic conditions including Cardiovascular Disease, Hypertension, Diabetes, Obesity, Alzheimer’s and other Neurodegenerative disorders.
CIII will be a biomedical invention factory to rapidly translate discoveries into lifesaving treatments and therapies.
This is made possible through our partnership with UCLA, its extraordinary staff of world class physicians, far-reaching clinic and hospital systems, and service to one of the most representative and diverse patient populations anywhere.
Beyond the benefits to human health, CIII will generate abundant jobs and attract the world’s top scientists, biotech leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors. It will revitalize Westwood and be a boon to Los Angeles. CIII will be essential to the future economic wellbeing of the State of California and will be to biotechnology what Silicon Valley has been to information technology.
We are profoundly grateful to Governor Gavin Newsom, Assembly Speaker Emeritus Anthony Rendon, and Senate President Pro Tempore Emeritus Toni Atkins, who have been absolutely visionary in their support for this transformational enterprise, as have been the Regents of the University of California, UCLA Health’s John Mazziotta, M.D., and most particularly, former UCLA Chancellor Gene Block.
There is no end to worthwhile causes; but this is an extraordinary opportunity to join philanthropists, policymakers, and industry leaders to affect the health and wellbeing of every person alive today and far into the future.
This is a chance to change the world and leave it better than we found it. It is an opportunity we simply cannot miss.
Sincerely,
Gary K. Michelson, M.D.
Co-Founder and Chairman, California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy
Immunology: The Future of Medicine
The Immune System’s Role in All Human Disease
We began this discussion of “what is the immune system” and its role in protecting us against infectious diseases. We looked at some of the incredible successes that have been had in vaccine development. There are plenty more. But at the same time, more than $20 billion has been spent attempting to develop effective vaccines against just three diseases: HIV with 30 million infected, Tuberculosis with 11 million infected, and Malaria with more than 200 million infected. Unknown amounts of money have also been spent in attempts to develop effective vaccines against parasitic worms, which infect more than a billion people worldwide. So where are we failing? Why are we failing?
Until quite recently, scientists have come piece-by-piece to recognize the role of the immune system in all human disease. In all of the so-called autoimmune diseases, the cause is the immune system running amuck and attacking that person’s own tissues.
In Type 1 (Juvenile) Diabetes, that person’s immune system seems to simply wake up one morning and decide to destroy those cells in the pancreas that make insulin. In cardiovascular disease, all of the damage done is driven by an inflammatory component, regardless of lifestyle, risk factors, and heredity. The same is true for Alzheimer’s Disease. Regardless of lifestyle, risk factors, and genetics, the first observable event that heralds the disease is an inflammatory response, mediated by the immune system, that causes the blood vessels in the brain to begin leaking.
Eliminating Global Health Burdens
Without question, the greatest advances in all of medicine have been the development of vaccines and the discovery and development of antibiotics. Vaccines prime the body’s innate immune system to recognize and destroy specific pathogens, such as harmful bacteria or viruses, conferring immunity. Vaccines have helped fight against global scourges such as smallpox and polio.
Smallpox killed 500 million people in the last 100 years leading up to its eradication by vaccination in 1977. The viral disease proved to be 30% to 75% fatal, depending on the specific strain one was infected with. Thanks to vaccines, the disease has been eradicated – the only human disease to have been eradicated to date.
As far back as the early 20th century, there would be polio epidemics every summer, killing or paralyzing its victims. As recently as 1952, there were more than 58,000 documented cases in the United States causing more than 3,000 deaths. It also paralyzed at least 28,000 people, the worst of which required placement into “iron lungs” to breathe for them due to the paralyzation of their diaphragms. Some were in the iron lung for years, and many eventually died., In the 1950s, the first polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk, and then later an additional vaccine developed by Albert Sabin, all but eliminated this horrific disease from all but three countries in the world.
Treating Cancer
So how has the answer to the question “what does the immune system do” changed? The cancer story.
Cancers are uncontrolled, rapidly dividing cells in the body, most of which have the potential to be fatal, some much faster than others. Historically, these have been treated by surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, or some combination, or all of these, depending on the specific type of cancer with varying results, again depending on such things as the tumor type, its aggressiveness, and the extent of its spread at the time of treatment. Certain cancers have proven to be particularly difficult to address. Blood cancers such as leukemias and lymphomas are not treatable by surgery or radiation, and chemotherapy has often proven to be in the end ineffective.
Former President Jimmy Carter
Malignant melanoma has historically become synonymous with a death sentence, as it tends to metastasize – that is, spread throughout the body, and then keep on rapidly growing, even before the initiation of treatment. When had in the past, malignant melanomas have proven to be quite lethal because of the propensity for very early and extensive metastasis and the gross amount of genetic mutations possessed by these tumors.
In August of 2015, former President Jimmy Carter announced to the world that he had been diagnosed with malignant melanoma that had already metastasized to both his liver and brain. This diagnosis historically carried a life expectancy of a few – and very miserable – months.
President Carter subsequently issued a statement that he had lived a good life and was preparing for his imminent demise. If treated at all, patients like the President have been treated with both surgery and radiation. But, the President was also treated with a new drug called Keytruda, invented through the work of James Allison, that allows the patient’s own immune system to recognize the abnormal cancer cells and destroy them. After extensive testing, President Carter announced that he was cancer free.
What happened? The answer is immunotherapy: the deliberate enhancement and enablement of the body’s immune system to give you what appears to be superpowers. What makes the Jimmy Carter story interesting is that the tumor had an extremely high number of genetic mutations and had already spread throughout his body. Both of these are very bad things. But, the immune system is like an army of ants. Once Keytruda unmasked the tumor so that the cells of the immune system could see it, they sought out those tumor cells wherever they were and destroyed them.
Countering the Aging Process
In addition to the immune system being the mediator of all human disease, it is the well-considered belief of Elizabeth Blackburn, inarguably the world’s leading expert on aging, and the winner of a Nobel Prize in 2009 for her work on Telomeres, Genes, and aging, that aging is acumulative inflammatory disease. Essentially, from birth through maturity and our elder years it is the inflammatory action of our immune system that breaks down our tissues and eventually destroys our organs, causing death. Simply put, aging is actually a disease process, once again mediated by the immune system. Dr. Blackburn believes that aging is a vaccinatable disease.
CAR T
Another extremely potent and promising form of immuno-oncology is called CAR T. In this therapy, cancer fighting cells are removed from the patient’s body, genetically modified to become cancer superkiller cells and then after additional replication, reinfused back into the patient, as essentially an anticancer vaccine. It may be possible in the very near future to produce universal vaccines capable of not only treating and curing already existing cancers, but even further, preventing them. The shift from the use of chemotherapy in an attempt to poison the cancer cells, which is equally destructive to the patient’s immune system, to enhancing the effectiveness of the immune system is clearly the future of cancer treatment and prevention.
Convergent Research
There is no shortage of brilliant and well-trained specialty scientists in the world today. Visit any major university and you will find separate buildings for Chemistry, Biology, Stem Cell Research Tissue Engineering, Microscopy, Physics, Biochemistry, Nanotechnology (molecular engineering), Engineering, Computational Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Deep Machine Learning.
The biggest problem is that the scientists do not talk outside of their specialties. Each specialist is holed up in their own silo. Even though everyone claims to be “collaborative,” that claim has been proven to be so limited in truth. In fact, the present model for funding the vast majority of all academic medical research does not provide for a multi-specialty approach, but quite literally pits each researcher against all others in an attempt to garner research funding in a system where each researcher must compete against all others for the limited funding available.
We need a different approach to how medical research is done, a commitment to focus on decoding the mysterious workings of the human immune system, and real world applications of those discoveries to developing effective vaccines against the most dangerous of infectious diseases, all of the common diseases that eventually claim us all, and the progressive degeneration of aging itself.
We are proposing the creation of the leading center for immunotherapy and vaccine development in the world. A convergent approach to research – that will de-silo the most brilliant minds from all of their specialized areas of expertise, from around the world, putting them in the same place, and having them focus convergently on just this one thing – will be to the cutting edge of medical research what Silicon Valley is to information technology.
Join Us
Why should you consider becoming involved? If there is a disease in your family, this might well be the very best shot to developing not just the cure, but perhaps even the prevention.There comes a point in most people’s lives when time becomes more valuable than money. Again, this may well be the very best shot at substantially slowing or even stopping the ravages of aging. And finally, it is an opportunity for each of us to leave this world a better place than we found it.
