In 2024, the University announced its decision to name its new Cancer Pavilion after the AbbVie Foundation, following a $75 million gift in support of the Pavilion’s construction. The Cancer Pavilion, which is set to open in April 2027, will serve as a hub for cancer care, research, and clinical trials on Chicago’s South Side.
Though the AbbVie Foundation is a nonprofit, its parent company, AbbVie, is a major pharmaceutical corporation that develops and sells drugs for profit and has often been criticized for its pricing. Relationships between the pharmaceutical industry and academic medical centers have been commonplace for decades, but they can also raise ethical concerns, including financial conflicts of interest that could threaten a medical center’s independence.
UChicago Medicine (UCMed) Comprehensive Cancer Center Director Kunle Odunsi, the AbbVie Foundation Distinguished Service Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, said that naming decisions follow a formal review process and are tied to the scale of a donor’s contribution.
Both Odunsi and Mitchell Posner, the chief clinical officer of the cancer services, emphasized that the AbbVie Foundation operates separately from the pharmaceutical company. “There’s a firewall between the two,” Odunsi said. The corporation focuses on drug development and clinical research, while the foundation supports philanthropic initiatives aimed at promoting health equity, he explained.
Posner said the gift would not give AbbVie any influence over clinical or research decisions made by UCMed. “The donations [are] governed by an agreement ensuring that the sole purpose of the [donation] is for the Pavilion’s construction and [that it] nowhere, in no way interferes with our independence or clinical or research integrity,” he said.
The collaboration between UCMed and AbbVie began in 2016 as a five-year agreement to jointly conduct medical research and clinical trials. It has since been extended twice and is currently set to last through 2027. Concurrently, AbbVie has gifted at least $18 million to UCMed to support community outreach and research initiatives. The foundation also donated $15 million to the University of Chicago Education Lab in 2018 to the lab’s work with Chicago Public Schools.
Though AbbVie’s work will extend into the Cancer Center—meaning ongoing collaboration efforts will continue—Odunsi emphasized that the University follows industry standards regarding nonprofit partnerships.
UCMed has seen threats to research funding amid the Trump administration’s cuts to federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, which Posner indicated have pushed UCMed to seek alternative sources of funding. AbbVie’s donation to the Cancer Center came before the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.
“In the current environment, funding of important scientific efforts to diagnose and treat cancer is compromised,” Posner said. “We’re looking at not replacing—because there will always be government funding—but being able to utilize other avenues of resources… and build upon the science we have now to provide options for patients that they would not have otherwise.”
Researchers have struggled to attain the funding they previously would have secured, according to Odunsi. Out of “400 grant [applications], only four will be funded,” he said. “Research that used to be a slam dunk has not been funded in the past year.”
Posner said that the difficult research funding environment has made seeking partnerships and gifts like those from AbbVie “more important than it’s ever been.”
“My hope is that things will change over time in terms of being able to secure funds through federal funding agencies that have [recently] been much more challenging,” he said.
