Mayo Clinic receives $5 million gift from Scottsdale resident

Friday, February 11, 2005

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Mark Mazzarino, a Scottsdale resident since 1980, has contributed $5 million to Mayo Clinic to establish the Mark Mazzarino Endowment for Medical Research at Mayo's Scottsdale campus. The endowment is designated specifically to fund ongoing research at the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center in Arizona.

The Mayo Clinic Cancer Center is one of only 39 National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the United States. It is one of only two Comprehensive Cancer Centers in Arizona and the only one with a base in the Valley.

To receive the NCI designation, an institution must meet rigorous standards of clinical excellence in treating cancer patients and scientific excellence in its cancer-relevant research programs. Based on the amount of grant funding it receives from the NCI, the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center is one of the top 10 cancer centers in the nation.

"We are delighted with Mr. Mazzarino's vision for his gift," said Laurence J. Miller, M.D., director of the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center. "He wants scientists to develop better tools not only for treating cancer, but also for curing and preventing it. He understands how biomedical research can and must translate into improved patient care, which is at the core of Mayo Clinic's mission."

Mazzarino was born in Staunton, Ill., in 1915. He worked for Shell Oil Company in Wood River, Ill., from 1938 until 1951, after which he went into the oil business on his own. In 1954 he formed Mazzarino & Kapp Oil Producers in Centralia, Ill., and operated 27 wells in Salem Field, one of the largest oil-producing areas in the state. The highest sustained production in Illinois occurred from about 1955 to 1965, when the state was producing approximately 80 million barrels of oil a year.

He began visiting Arizona as a young man to treat his asthma. He moved to Scottsdale permanently after he retired in 1980 and began to invest in real estate. He became a patient at Mayo Clinic in 1998.

"I decided to make this gift to Mayo Clinic because the people here have been so good to me," Mr. Mazzarino said. "There is no other place like Mayo. Plus, I know they are conducting some exciting research to work toward finding cures for cancer. I lost my wife to cancer many years ago, and I'd love to see it cured during my lifetime." His wife, Shirley, died in 1960.

Mazzarino's contribution was one of 90,000 charitable gifts totaling $182.4 million that Mayo Clinic received from benefactors in 2004.

The Mayo Clinic Cancer Center has been in existence for more than 30 years and is the only NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center with a national presence. The Cancer Center is one integrated organization with cancer patient care and cancer research facilities in Scottsdale, AZ, Rochester, Minn. and Jacksonville, Fla.

Research activities in Arizona include major basic science and translational studies in hematological malignancies (cancers of the blood and blood tissues), pancreatic cancer and neuro-oncology (cancers of the brain and nervous system). Cancer Center staff in Arizona are developing novel, safe and effective therapies for cancer, using preclinical and early clinical trials, and are working to reduce cancer-related health disparities. The Mayo Clinic Cancer Center offers a broad array of state-of-the-art diagnostic and therapeutic options for all types of cancer.

Mayo Clinic is a private group practice of medicine dedicated to providing diagnosis and treatment of patient illnesses through a systematic focus on individual patient needs. As a leading academic medical center in the Southwest, Mayo Clinic focuses on providing specialty and surgical care in more than 65 disciplines at its outpatient facility in north Scottsdale and at Mayo Clinic Hospital. The 202-licensed bed hospital is located at 56th Street and Mayo Boulevard (north of Bell Road) in northeast Phoenix, and provides inpatient care to support the medical and surgical specialties of the clinic, which is located at 134th Street and Shea Boulevard in Scottsdale.

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