Keck School of Medicine receives $10 million gift

The Keck School of Medicine received a $10 million donation from the Stephenson family — Emmet Stephenson, Toni Stephenson and Tessa Stephenson Brand — on Wednesday to create the Stephenson Family Personalized Medicine Center at the Center for Applied Molecular Medicine. The gift specifically aids Dr. David B. Agus, professor at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, by allowing him to advance his work in discovering new practices with experimental medicine for cancer research.

According to USC News, the multi-million dollar donation has already paved the way for the appointment of executive positions within the Stephenson Family Personalized Medicine Center. Recently, Shannon Mumenthaler was appointed laboratory director and Dan Ruderman was appointed the director of analytics.

Half of the donation was contributed Brand, a USC alumna, who has dedicated much of her time to philanthropy, specifically by guiding Agus to further advancements in the future of science and technology.

“Dr. Agus is forward-thinking,” she said in a statement to USC News. “He is thinking 100 years into the future. He plans to change the face of health care rather than solve a single problem. He thinks bigger than most people, and he is the type of person we want to support.”

Agus conducts research at the Keck School of Medicine where he has developed methods to treat cancer by conducting tests in various aspects in experimental medicine. He is noted by the medical community for his personalized medicine company called Navigenics, which he co-founded alongside partner, Dietrich Stephan. His career follows a long list of field and lab work to advance new methods to cure cancer.

“Personalized medicine is really about bringing new technologies … to [provide] a whole new classification system for cancers,” Agus said in a statement to USC News.

Agus currently serves as the director of the USC Center for Applied Molecular Medicine and the USC Westside Norris Cancer Center and is the co-director of the USC National Cancer Institute.

Prior to his work at USC, Agus was the director of the Spielberg Family Center for Applied Proteomics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles where he worked to create proteomic technologies to guide doctors to decide on important health care policies.

Agus was also a physician in oncology at Cedars-Sinai of Los Angeles, director of the Louis Warschaw Prostate Cancer center and an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. He also holds the American Cancer Society Physician Research award.

Emmet, founder of StarTek Inc. and pioneer in the establishment of Domain.com, along with wife, Toni, have both committed their careers to discovering cancer research centers where they could sponsor researchers to establish strategies for the advancement of personalized medicine.

According to USC News, when Toni Stephenson was undergoing cancer treatment, Emmet Stephenson met Agus. Their meeting led to Agus’s guidance through Toni’s treatment, where he acted as the principal doctor who helped her reach an 18-month cancer remission.

“When my mom was diagnosed with late-stage lymphoma, my dad put together a team of four doctors, including Dr. Agus, to act as an advisory board for my mom’s treatments,” Tessa said in a statement to USC News. “He felt four minds were better than one, and these four people are all geniuses. We are happy to say that this team cured her.”

The grant specifically created two positions within CAMM.

Mumenthaler, holds a Ph.D from UCLA and is expected to pilot a group of researchers to study the enigmatic nature of the tumor microenvironment.

Ruderman is currently conducting his postdoctoral research at USC. His new role will allow him, along with other researchers, to conduct data to better understand the function of the genome and mutations.

“And our team is made up of physicists, mathematicians, engineers, biologists — all different disciplines who each look at data in a different fashion,” Agus said in a statement to USC News. “Our goal is to create models for what’s happening to the cancer and what will happen. And those mathematical models can hopefully tell us which treatments to do — or not to do.”