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Indianapolis millionaire and tech entrepreneur Don Brown is donating $30 million to the Indiana University School of Medicine to speed up research in one of the fastest-moving and competitive areas of medicine: finding ways to use the body's immune system to fight cancer and other ravaging diseases.
The gift, announced Dec. 13, is the second largest from a non-corporate donor in the medical school's history, behind only a $50 million gift in 2006 from retail developer Melvin Simon and his wife, Bren, to support cancer research and construction of the Simon Cancer Center.
The medical school said it will use the money to establish the Brown Center for Immunotherapy to find new therapies for some of the world's toughest diseases and make them accessible to large numbers of patients.
The move could boost Indiana's reputation as a hotbed of life sciences research in one of the most closely watched areas of medicine.
In recent years, immunotherapy has attracted billions of dollars in research at pharmaceutical companies, medical...