In the final allocation from the late bioscience magnate Alfred Mann’s nine-figure gift to USC a quarter century ago, the university announced last week a new $40 million partnership with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles for biomedical research and innovation.
Mann was a serial entrepreneur who launched several biomedical companies, including Westlake Village-based MannKind Corp., which markets an inhaled insulin drug, and Second Sight Medical Products Inc., which developed a prosthesis to treat patients suffering from certain forms of retinal degeneration. Last year, Second Sight merged with Nano Precision Medical Inc. and the joint entity was renamed Vivani Medical Inc.
In 1998, Mann donated $174 million to USC for biomedical research. Thanks to investment strategies on the part of the university, that donation has grown in value to $230 million. Much of the original donation went toward the USC Alfred Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering, which has a mission to bridge the gap between health sciences and engineering.
Last fall, USC President Carol Folt announced two new initiatives using proceeds from Mann’s investments. The first was the naming of the USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences with a $50 million endowment from the foundation.
The second initiative was the naming of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering with a $35 million endowment to support education and scholarship.
This new partnership with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles marks the final initiative from the Mann donation. It continues a 90-year history of collaborative efforts between USC and Children’s Hospital, which provides specialized pediatric care that reaches about one-third of children in Los Angeles County each year. Many of the physicians at Children’s Hospital are also faculty members of the Keck School of Medicine of USC.
In recent years, the two institutions have collaborated on cell therapy programs, which now consists of 40 principal investigators with more than $56 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health for cell and gene therapy research.
