Growing up in a small town in Oklahoma, T. Boone Pickens learned his work ethic and generosity from his parents and grandparents. They didn’t have much, but they always gave, he often said.

Pickens, who went on to achieve great success as an innovative entrepreneur, was known for both his shrewd business acumen and his generosity. In his lifetime, he made over $1 billion in philanthropic contributions to advance — among other things — medical research, conservation and education, all of which he valued greatly.

In August, the Wilmer Eye Institute received a $20 million donation from the T. Boone Pickens Foundation. The legacy gift, first pledged in 2013 by the late Texas energy leader, is one of the largest in Wilmer’s history and will fund vision-saving research and professorships.

Pickens’ interest in the research and treatment of eye disease developed in the 1980s after his father’s diagnosis of macular degeneration, then the leading cause of blindness in the United States. At the time, no treatments existed to prevent his father from losing his vision. Later, when Pickens developed macular degeneration, he sought treatment at Wilmer for that condition and cataracts. Pickens’ care team included Walter Stark, M.D., and Neil Bressler, M.D. “Walter Stark, like my dad, had deep Oklahoma roots,” says Pickens’ daughter, Liz Cordia. “They became fast friends. This friendship ultimately evolved into Walter treating my granddad’s glaucoma and my dad’s cataracts and later diagnosing his macular degeneration.”

By that time, research had led to treatment for macular degeneration in the form of injections of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor into the middle cavity of the eye. As a result of the care he received at Wilmer, Pickens retained most of his eyesight until his death in 2019 at the age of 91.

“One of the pleasures of this revolutionary treatment, which often requires monthly monitoring, is that you really get to know the patients,” says Bressler, the James P. Gills Professor of Ophthalmology. “Boone not only was a great businessman and philanthropist, he also was a great storyteller. He always had a new story. It might relate to something going on in politics or in business, but it always had humor and a lesson in life and human nature to be considered. He learned a lot about retinal disease from me, but I learned a lot more about the oil business and life from him.”

At Wilmer, Pickens came to know many of the members of his care team by name and was known to send personal notes of thanks to them over the years. “Mr. Pickens would treat every staff member, front desk associate, technician, photographer, physician and nurse with the highest degree of respect and consideration,” recalls ophthalmic photography manager Dennis Cain, C.R.A. “I very much admired his down-home, friendly sense of humor. He reminded me so much of my own grandfather: kind, generous, humorous.”

T. Boone Pickens, center, surrounded by Wilmer’s perioperative nurses in 2013

The gift is actually Pickens’ third to Wilmer and brings his support of the institution to more than $28 million. In 2005 and 2009, Pickens made gifts totaling $8 million — first to establish the Boone Pickens Professorship in Ophthalmology, currently held by Amir Kashani, M.D., Ph.D., and then to help with construction of the Robert H. and Clarice Smith Building to house Wilmer’s research laboratories and state-of-the-art operating rooms.

“Mr. Pickens’ generous contributions to Wilmer will serve as the foundation on which teams of clinicians, scientists and engineers will develop novel diagnostic and therapeutic interventions to prevent blindness and improve the health of people around the world,” says Kashani.

In addition to supporting cutting-edge research and the Boone Pickens Professorship, the $20 million gift from the Pickens Foundation will endow additional professorships, specifically for young investigators, called Rising Professorships. The funds will be allocated to researchers who conduct novel, vision-saving research that may be overlooked by other potential funding opportunities.

“The Pickens Rising Professors will be our best and brightest physician-scientists who are early in their careers and exploring their new ideas for improving the care of patients and ending blinding eye diseases,” says Wilmer Director Peter J. McDonnell, M.D., the William Holland Wilmer Professor of Ophthalmology, “This transformative gift from our friend, Mr. Pickens, will accelerate our work in artificial intelligence, stem cells, nanotechnology and other exciting new frontiers.”

Pickens Foundation representative Jay Rosser says Pickens believed in making a generational impact with his giving. “He wanted to train researchers and doctors of the future who could provide quality care for decades, hopefully hundreds of years going forward. And I think all of these gifts had that intended consequence,” says Rosser.

Supporting Groundbreaking Research

Left to right: Peter Gehlbach, Elizabeth Cordia,Peter J. McDonnell, Jay Rosser, Amir Kashani, Dennis Cain. Gehlbach, the J. Willard Marriott, Jr. Professor of Ophthalmology, is a longtime friend of the Pickens family.

Amir H. Kashani, M.D., Ph.D., the Boone Pickens Professor of Ophthalmology, is lead investigator of the Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography Initiative in several multicenter studies funded by the National Institutes of Health and the BrightFocus Foundation. These studies aim to develop a clinically useful biomarker of retinal capillary changes to monitor the development of a prevalent form of systemic vascular disease and cerebrovascular disease, known as vascular cognitive impairment and dementia — one of the leading types of cognitive impairment, likely on par with Alzheimer’s disease.

Kashani is also a lead investigator for the first clinical trial in humans to test a novel stem cell therapy for severe vision loss from advanced dry age-related macular degeneration and geographic atrophy. For this study, he and the research team pioneered a novel surgical procedure to insert a monolayer of healthy stem cell–derived retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) to replace the damaged RPE in patients with these conditions.

In 2016, he was named one of the top 150 innovators in the field of medical and surgical retina by Ocular Surgery News. In 2017, he was named one of the top 50 “rising stars” worldwide in the field of ophthalmology by The Ophthalmologist. Kashani’s work has been recognized by multiple organizations and publications, including Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science, Science Translation Medicine, Alzheimer’s and Dementia and Best Doctors in America.