“In the past, occasional funding for SCD has come from philanthropic funders that don’t count the condition among their core interests, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Thrasher Research Fund, and more recently, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But when it comes to programmatic philanthropy for SCD, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is essentially the only game in town. It has been supporting SCD research since 2008, and has so far invested about $17 million total in that dozen or so years, across some 35 projects, said Dr. Sindy Escobar Alvarez, program director for medical research at DDCF. The organization’s focus on sickle cell tracks directly back to founder Doris Duke, who expressly directed in her will that the foundation address the disease.”
