Sciences and Medicine
Andy Grove Puts Millions Into Parkinson's Fight
Kerry A. Dolan 01.10.08, 6:00 PM ET

BURLINGAME, CALIF. -

There's no better sign of support than a multimillion-dollar gift. Former Intel Chairman Andy Grove told Forbes he is making a $40 million bequest to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research to help it continue pushing for a cure to the neurological disease.

Grove, 71, was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2000. Since then, he has spent or committed to spend $22 million on further research and treatments for the disease. Some of those funds have been spent in conjunction with the Michael J. Fox Foundation, to which Grove serves as an adviser. The additional $40 million that he will contribute posthumously to the foundation underscores his support.

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"This is a vote of confidence from me," says Grove. "It actually makes my living collaboration more productive."
Video: Andy Grove On Parkinson's Disease
The foundation was established by the actor Michael J. Fox, who was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1991 when he was just 30 years old.
Grove has been increasingly active in raising money for scientific research over the past decade. He spent seven years spearheading a fundraising campaign for scientific research at the University of California, San Francisco, which garnered $1.6 billion in contributions. Forbes has estimated Grove's personal net worth at about $400 million.
Both Grove and the Fox Foundation are impatient with the slow progress in developing new drugs for Parkinson's. The mainstay drug, levadopa, is 40 years old, and merely addresses the symptoms of Parkinson's. No drug is available to slow the progress of Parkinson's disease, which affects 6 million people worldwide. The National Institutes of Health spends $200 million a year on Parkinson's research, but scientists still don't know what causes the disease.

Over the past few years, Grove has applied his characteristic intensity and razor-sharp intellect to exploring why progress in finding treatments for neurological diseases, such as Parkinson's, has been agonizingly slow.
"What is needed is a cultural revolution that values curiosity, follow-through a problem-solving orientation" as well as one that puts the data collected by scientists under broad scrutiny, Grove said in a speech in November to the annual conference of the Society for Neuroscience. (See the Jan. 28 issue of Forbes magazine for a detailed exploration of his campaign.)
Grove found kindred spirits in those who run the Michael J. Fox Foundation. Since it was launched in 2000, the Michael J. Fox Foundation has spent $100 million funding research focused on better treatments and--it hopes--a cure. "Patient relevance is central to every decision we make. We fund research that pushes things along," says Katie Hood, chief executive of the Fox Foundation.

The Fox Foundation has also become a powerful arbiter of emerging treatments for Parkinson's. Edward Lanphier, chief executive of Sangamo BioSciences, beams when he tells a reporter that his company has a $1 million grant from the Fox Foundation for a new Parkinson's treatment that has yet to enter clinical trials.
Others wish they had that stamp of approval. "People ask us why we don't have funding from Michael J. Fox," says John Mordock, chief of Neurologix, a biotech company that has completed an early stage gene therapy trial for Parkinson's.

These days, Grove exhibits few signs of Parkinson's other than an occasional tremor in his right hand. He exercises religiously with the hope that it will help stave off progression of the disease. And while he still serves as a senior adviser to Intel management, Grove spends around half his time delving into the details of the Parkinson's research he is funding.
Every day of action, Grove believes, can make a difference.
Hear Andy Grove and Michael J. Fox discuss the bequest in interviews with the Forbes.com Video Network.