The University of British Columbia has received a multi-million dollar donation in its quest to understand and treat Alzheimer’s disease.
Three gifts from Charles Fipke, whose geological discoveries made Canada one of the leading producers of diamonds, will see UBC receive a total of $9.1 million.
Charles Fipke has donated $9.1 million to UBC for Alzheimer's research (Photo Credit: UBC Handout)
Fipke has given $3 million to endow a professorship dedicated to Alzheimer’s research, another pledge of $600,000 to outfit the lab with cutting edge equipment, and $5.5 million to support the purchase of a brain imaging machine.
The former Kelowna resident made the gift in honour of his long-time friend and former BC Premier Bill Bennett, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. Bennett’s son Brad expressed his gratitude for the donation.
“Our family is incredibly grateful to Chuck Fipke for this generous donation to Alzheimer’s research and we are very moved by his reasons for doing it,” Brad Bennett said. “The end game has to be to find a cure for this. We still don’t know what causes this disease and there are far too many people afflicted with it and far too many families like ours suffering the horrible consequences. They say with Alzheimer’s patients you say good-bye twice, the first of those being the most difficult because you’re saying good-bye to the person you knew and loved while they are still alive.”
The Centre where the new lab will be located (Photo Credit: UBC)
Dr. Haakon Nygaard, the new Fipke Professor in Alzheimer’s Research, has joined the Faculty of Medicine from the Yale School of Medicine. He will be seeing patients and conducting research in the recently opened Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, which unites under one roof UBC’s and Vancouver Coastal Health’s scientific and clinical expertise across neuroscience, psychiatry and neurology.
A UBC alumnus, Fipke had previously given $8.7 million to the University, mostly for buildings and equipment at UBC’s Okanagan campus.
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