La Jolla billionaire donates $ 220 million in unusual quest to improve people’s health

On the eve of the Tokyo Olympics, billionaire couple from La Jolla are giving scientists $ 220 million to study the biology of elite athletes in hopes of obtaining information that will go a long way to helping people live longer and healthier.

Joe and Clara Tsai’s donation appears to be one of the largest ever for sports-related health and medical research and will benefit the Salk Institute in La Jolla, a world leader in basic biology, and UC San Diego. , specializing in rotating discoveries. in drugs and therapies.

They will share the $ 220 million with Stanford, which will lead the new Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, as well as Boston Children’s Hospital, the University of Kansas and the University of Oregon.

The Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center, where some current Olympians have trained, and the San Diego Padres are expected to be part of the research, according to UCSD.

“Scientific funding has traditionally been focused on the study of disease,” Clara Wu Tsai said in a statement on Wednesday.

“We take the opposite approach and study the human body in its healthiest and most vital aspects, to enable everyone to thrive, from an Olympic-level athlete to a grandfather lacking in mobility for enjoy a full life. ”

The Salk will focus on the role genes and molecules play in training, healing, and recovery, while UCSD offers models that better predict how tissue changes affect the body.

It’s part of a larger look at the bones, muscles, ligaments, tendons, and soft tissues that make up the musculoskeletal system. Problems with this part of the body can cause crippling pain and stiffness, especially in older people.

The system contributes to many common disorders, including arthritis, which has affected the careers of legendary golfers such as Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson of San Diego. It’s also the root cause of the kind of rotator cuff shoulder injuries that led Padres pitcher Mike Clevinger to undergo Tommy John surgery earlier this season. More than 126 million Americans suffer from musculoskeletal problems.

Joe Tsai has enormous resources to devote to the problem.

Forbes magazine estimates his fortune at $ 10.9 billion, most of which is tied to Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company and one of the largest of its kind in the world. He co-founded the company and is currently its executive vice president.

Tsai, who was born in Taiwan and educated at Yale, also owns the Brooklyn Nets of the NBA, the New York Liberty of the WNBA and the Barclay Center, the arena in Brooklyn where the two teams play their home games. .

In recent years, he and his wife have become well-known philanthropists. They donated $ 50 million last August to support economic mobility in the black community, especially in Brooklyn. In April 2020, they donated $ 1.6 million in medical supplies to UC San Diego to help fight Covid-19.

The new Tsai giveaway is one of the greatest giveaways of any kind ever made by donors living in San Diego County, and it reflects the desire of some philanthropists to shorten the time it takes to turn lab discoveries into new treatments. .

In 2013, Denny Sanford of La Jolla gave UCSD $ 100 million to accelerate efforts to find ways to use human stem cells to treat a number of ailments – a move called the bedside bench.

Clara Tsai told the Union-Tribune in an email: “We started thinking about the Alliance idea in La Jolla ahead of Covid in early 2020.

“After strong dialogues and engagement with biologists, engineers, coaches, clinicians and athletes, we decided to focus on defining the scientific principles that underpin human performance. “

Some of the research will be led by Sam Ward of UCSD at the Triton Center for Performance and Injury Science, which will be of interest and have implications for anyone who buys a golf club.

“Right now you can go to Callaway Golf and someone will analyze everything related to your swing,” said Ward, professor in the departments of orthopedic surgery and radiology at UCSD.

“But they don’t take into account what’s going on behind your back, shoulders, or wrists to help you optimize the right golf swing.

“We try to integrate not only the mechanics but also the underlying biology in order to make decisions about the right equipment and the right training regimes and the right rehabilitation regimes for everyone. “

The new alliance also includes Satchidananda Panda, a Salk researcher who has helped show how factors such as circadian rhythms and sleep deprivation can affect the musculoskeletal system.

“In each of us there is an athlete,” said Panda. “We want to be in good physical shape and not be injured. That’s why we’re going to be doing research that applies to all of us.