‘Worth’: Larry Ellison’s Fund Focuses on the Aging

Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, became so interested in learning about how living organisms work and how that knowledge could be used to prevent serious diseases, Worth magazine (May) reports, that he once spent a vacation assisting researchers at a molecular-biology laboratory run by Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel Prize winner. Mr. Lederberg says he spent some of that time challenging Mr. Ellison, who is estimated by Forbes magazine to be worth nearly $22-billion, to put his fortune “to more gratifying uses.”

The idea that appealed to Mr. Ellison was to start a grant-making foundation that would finance basic biomedical research. Today, the foundation Mr. Ellison financed is the largest source of private funds for research on the biology of aging, providing $20-million a year in grants, says the magazine. Mr. Ellison has put $100-million into the foundation since it was created in 1998, and he told the magazine he eventually expects to contribute several billion dollars.

Mr. Ellison has tried to make sure his foundation is an alternative to the National Institute on Aging, the main federal agency that finances research. “We try to investigate things that are neglected by them,” he says. He also tries to move faster than the government, which requires a 25-page application from scientists and often takes at least a year to make a decision. The Ellison Foundation asks only for a four-page project description and gets back to candidates in a matter of months, the magazine says.

Mr. Ellison “has shown little patience with even that much bureaucracy,” says Worth. At one meeting, it says, the foundation’s scientific review committee had winnowed down 400 applications to 10 and was trying to decide which of six projects should take the last four awards. “Oh let’s just fund all six,” was Mr. Ellison’s response.

The article is available at http://www.worth.com.