# Michael Milken

Source: https://onco.cc/people/michael-milken/  
OnCo record `michael-milken` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in 1993, the financier founded the Prostate Cancer Foundation, whose grants helped pay for the science behind abiraterone and enzalutamide and built a network of precision oncology centres for US veterans.

## Summary

Michael Milken, the financier whose junk-bond career ended in a securities-fraud conviction, was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in 1993 and, as the Prostate Cancer Foundation's history records, founded the Foundation that year, transforming research, collaboration and awareness. PCF funds investigators and teams rather than running its own laboratories and insists on speed: short applications, fast decisions and a yearly retreat where grantees share unpublished data. Its own history credits $8 million of PCF funding toward the development of abiraterone (Zytiga) and $14.75 million toward enzalutamide (Xtandi), and a $65 million partnership with the US Department of Veterans Affairs in 2016 that established 22 precision oncology centres of excellence. Milken also founded FasterCures, part of the Milken Institute, to speed medical research more broadly.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-10
- Tags: hero; donor; patient
- Role: Prostate cancer patient who founded the Prostate Cancer Foundation in 1993
- Specialisms: Prostate cancer research funding; Medical research philanthropy; Research acceleration

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Milken
- Prostate Cancer Foundation: our history: https://www.pcf.org/about/our-history/

## Connected records

- cancers: [Prostate cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/prostate/)
- drugs: [Abiraterone acetate](https://onco.cc/drugs/abiraterone/), [Enzalutamide](https://onco.cc/drugs/enzalutamide/)
- institutions: [Prostate Cancer Foundation](https://onco.cc/institutions/pcf/)
- people: [Charles L. Sawyers](https://onco.cc/people/charles-sawyers/), [David H. Koch](https://onco.cc/people/david-koch/)
- bottlenecks: [Funding follows fashion, not burden](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-funding-allocation/), [The valley of death between lab and product](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-translational-valley/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/michael-milken.json