IU Cancer Center receives $7.5 million gift

The IU Cancer Center received a $7.5 million endowment from the Eli Lilly and Company Foundation Tuesday in order to help attract and retain nationally recognized researchers and scientists. \nThe gift -- which will provide the Indianapolis-based center with $1.5 million a year during a five-year span -- is the largest one-time donation from the Lilly Foundation to an institution or cause.\n"I think a key issue is that we have the opportunity to retain our most talented members and recruit new ones," said IU Cancer Center Director Dr. Stephen Williams. "We need an enormous amount of resources to recruit and gifts like this and others are essential to doing that."\nWilliams said that depending on several variables he hopes the gift will be able to help attract or retain 10 to 15 researchers or scientists.\nLast fall IU President Adam Herbert said in his State of the University speech that his goal is for the Cancer Center to become one of the top five institutions of its kind in the nation. \nAs the center is currently undergoing a substantial $150 million expansion, Williams said that more funds will play a major role in accomplishing the University's aspirations for the center.\n"We are working very hard towards being the best we can possibly be," he said. "We are already one of the elite institutions in the United States and we seek to be even better."\nWilliams said he hopes that the gift will not only improve the center's direct patient care, but also long-term research and education will benefit. \n"While some of these (new hires) will not have immediate impact on patient care, in the long run they will provide the most successful and most innovative cancer care."\nThe Lilly gift comes after a long-standing relationship between the company and IU. \n"There is a lot of cross-pollination between us and IU," said Eli Lilly Senior Communications Associate Joan Todd. "We hire from there, and vice versa, and we do a lot of research collaboration." \nTodd added that the company believes that IU's goal to have the Cancer Center be a top institution was well in line with making Central Indiana a desirable place and a hub for "biocompanies."\nThe Eli Lilly and Company Foundation was created in 1968 to carry out the philanthropic interests and is a major source of the company's support for non-profit and charitable organizations, according to a press release.\nMary Hardin, media manager at the IU School of Medicine, said Eli Lilly has been a key partner and a huge supporter of life sciences in Indiana, and that they have "a long history of doing things that benefit Hoosiers and improve the quality of cancer care"