University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - History

History

The cancer center is named after Monroe Dunaway Anderson, a banker and cotton trader from Jackson, Tennessee. He was a member of a business partnership with his brother-in-law Will Clayton. Their company became the largest cotton company in the world. Anderson feared that in the event of one of the partners' deaths, the company would lose a large amount of money to estate tax and be forced to dissolve. To avoid this, Anderson created the MD Anderson Foundation with an initial sum of $300,000. In 1939 after Anderson's death, the foundation received $19 million.

In 1941 the Texas Legislature had appropriated $500,000 to build a cancer hospital and research center. The Anderson Foundation agreed to match funds with the state if the hospital were located in Houston in the Texas Medical Center (another project of the Anderson Foundation) and named after Anderson.

Using surplus World War II Army barracks, the hospital operated for 10 years from a converted residence and 46 beds leased in a Houston hospital before moving to its current location in 1954.

The institution became the subject of controversy in 2005, when it leased the use of its name to private investors who intended to promote a particular therapeutic approach, proton therapy. An article in the Houston Chronicle suggested that the arrangement between the Center and the investors might skew incentives, providing M.D. Anderson with non-medical reasons to "send as many patients as possible into the program."

In 2011 the Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation gave $150 million to MD Anderson. The new Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy is an international center of clinical excellence focusing on using the latest advances in genetic information to develop safe, more effective treatments for patients on a case-by-case basis.