The Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) in La Jolla, California, has announced a $70 million gift from Giving Pledger T. Denny Sanford.

The gift will enable the institute to recruit up to 20 new faculty over the next four years to expand its research efforts in the fields of cancer, neurodegeneration, and computational biology to develop new diagnostics, therapeutics, and insights. The funding is intended to help the institute—whose faculty shrank over the past decade—to compete for top-tier faculty, while also providing support staff and equipment. It can cost between $2 million and $5 million to recruit prized early-career researchers and between $8 million and $10 million to recruit established elite scientists, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

According to the Union-Tribune, the donation was made at the request of SBP president David A. Brenner, formerly a top fundraiser at UC San Diego who is credited with raising $1.5 billion for the university over 15 years, of which an estimated $450 million came from Sanford. Sanford has reportedly donated nearly $1 billion to causes in San Diego County.

“This is a transformational investment in the continued strength of biomedical research,” said Brenner. “Biomedical research has changed. Scientists need to collaborate with many different types of researchers with different technologies and different skill sets…[SBP is] located in one of the best—if not the best—research communities in the world.”

(Photo credit: University of California San Diego)