‘Grief into action.’ Philanthropists give historic $150 million donation to City of Hope for pancreatic cancer research

For entrepreneur and philanthropist Emmet Stephenson Jr., seeing his wife and friends die from pancreatic cancer served as a wake-up call. Now Emmet and his daughter Tessa are donating a historic $150 million to the City of Hope to help advance research into finding a cure for what’s known as the “silent killer.” “We decided we were going to turn our grief into action and we wanted as few people as possible to go through what we did,” said Tessa Stephenson Brand. The gift equals nearly two-thirds of the total annual research budget for pancreatic cancer from the National Cancer Institute, City of Hope said in a news release about the donation. “If we were to get lucky and find a cure for pancreatic cancer soon, then we’re happy to have the money go to the next most deadly disease in the cancer arena,” he said. Dr. Daniel D. Von Hoff, a professor and cancer scientist at the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix, that is a part of the City of Hope, said pancreatic cancer is hard to detect early partly because the pancreas is tough to image and people often don’t show symptoms.