Los Angeles cancer institute drops 88 staff next month
The cancer research center in Los Angeles filed for layoffs on November 4, joining a wave of reductions in the local healthcare sector.
By Sanjay Caldwell ·
The Ellison Medical Institute, a cancer research center in Los Angeles, will permanently lay off 88 employees in January. The announcement comes from a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filed on November 4, 2026.
David Agus, the institute's founding chief executive and oncologist, leads the organization. The facility occupies 84,000 square feet at 12414 Exposition Blvd., near the Expo/Bundy Metro station. Its LinkedIn profile lists a total workforce of 51 to 200 people.
The institute focuses on artificial intelligence, molecular analytics, and interdisciplinary disease research. It operates preventative medicine clinics, cancer clinics, research laboratories, and community education programs. The organization also runs a three-week summer program for high school seniors.
Tech mogul Larry Ellison funds the institute. He has made substantial donations to cancer research, including a $200 million gift to USC in 2016 for an interdisciplinary medical center. That center, the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine, later moved from USC. In a keynote speech at Oracle AI World 2026, Ellison stated that AI will make most cancers gone in five years and certainly in ten.
The institute has pursued drug development in recent months. In June, it signed an exclusive license with UniQuest, the commercialization arm of the University of Queensland in Australia. This deal aims to advance a new prostate cancer treatment that could enter first-in-human trials as early as 2027. The institute also announced a research partnership with Salt AI in 2025. Salt AI provides AI-powered tools for drug design.
Ellison and Agus also founded the Ellison Institute of Technology in Oxford, England. The institute did not respond to requests for comment regarding the specific reasons for the January layoffs.
The cuts occur as other healthcare providers in Los Angeles implement similar reductions. Kaiser Permanente plans to cut 147 business and administrative jobs across California starting November 20. This affects 16 locations, including 21 employees in Los Angeles County. L.A. Care Health Plan laid off 225 employees in March, a reduction of nearly 3% of its workforce. Children's Hospital Los Angeles cut 5.8% of its staff last year due to reduced Medi-Cal reimbursement rates. Keck Medicine of USC laid off 89 employees in October 2025 to address a university-wide operating deficit.
