Bernie Marcus's foundation gives USC $28.7 million to regrow heart muscle with stem cells

On 11 August 2026 the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California announced a $28.7 million award from the Marcus Foundation, the Atlanta-based charity created by Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus and his wife, Billi, to Dr. Chuck Murry, director of USC Stem Cell. It is the largest gift the foundation has ever made to USC and one of its largest to academic medicine.

A heart attack kills millions of heart-muscle cells, and the heart cannot replace them; the damaged area turns to scar tissue, which can lead to heart failure. Murry and his colleagues have spent about three decades developing a way to grow new heart-muscle cells from stem cells and deliver them into the injured heart. The gift will carry that work into people: a first clinical trial is planned to begin in 2027 at Keck Hospital, with a second site at the University of Washington, where part of the technology was developed. About 18 patients with substantial muscle damage from a heart attack will take part. The study's main aim is to test safety and feasibility, while also looking for early signs that the transplanted cells improve heart function.

A second research track will study how the immune system reacts to the transplanted cells, with the goal of reducing or removing the need for immunosuppressive drugs, which carry serious side effects. Murry described the cells as a new kind of living medicine.

Bernie Marcus, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, died in 2024 at 95. Marcus Foundation president Jay Kaiman told eJewishPhilanthropy that Marcus had once wanted to be a doctor and had a particular interest in stem cells and the heart, and suggested that quotas may have kept him out of medicine. Medical research is one of the foundation's five pillars. Its earlier gifts include $25.9 million in 2024 for stroke research at Emory University and Grady Health System in Atlanta.