Ellison Medical Institute to Cut 88 Jobs in January

The Ellison Medical Institute will permanently separate 88 employees from its Los Angeles staff in January. The cuts were disclosed in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification document filed with federal authorities on Nov. 4. The notice indicates the reductions are permanent and will take effect within the next two months.

The institute operates out of an 84,000-square-foot facility located at 12414 Exposition Blvd., near the Expo/Bundy Metro station. Its public LinkedIn profile lists the organization as having between 51 and 200 total employees. The 88 positions being eliminated represent a substantial portion of that workforce. The institute describes its mission as a medical research and development center focused on artificial intelligence, molecular analytics, and interdisciplinary disease treatment. It also maintains preventative medicine clinics, research laboratories, and community education programs.

David Agus, the institute's founding chief executive and an oncologist, leads the organization. The center was funded by tech entrepreneur Larry Ellison, who has long supported cancer research initiatives. Ellison has made substantial donations to the field, including a $200 million gift to the University of Southern California in 2016 to build an interdisciplinary medical center focused on cancer. That center, the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine, later moved away from USC. In a keynote speech at Oracle AI World 2026, Ellison stated that artificial intelligence will make most cancers gone in five years, and certainly in ten.

The institute has continued to expand its research activities despite the upcoming staff reductions. In June, it signed an exclusive license with UniQuest, the commercialization arm of the University of Queensland in Australia, to advance a new prostate cancer treatment. A news release indicated the drug could enter first-in-human trials as early as 2027. In 2025, the organization announced a research partnership with Salt AI, a Los Angeles-based company that provides AI-powered tools for drug design. The institute also operates a three-week summer educational program for high school seniors. Ellison and Agus previously co-founded the Ellison Institute of Technology in Oxford, England.

The Ellison Medical Institute did not respond to requests for comment regarding the specific reasons behind the layoffs. The cuts occur while other healthcare providers in Los Angeles also reduce their workforces. Kaiser Permanente plans to cut 147 business and administrative jobs across California, with reductions affecting 16 locations starting Nov. 20. Of those, 21 employees in Los Angeles County will be impacted, while San Diego sees the largest single-site cut of 72 jobs.

Other recent examples of workforce reductions in the region include Children's Hospital Los Angeles, which laid off 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 an operating deficit. L.A. Care Health Plan, the nation's largest publicly operated health plan, cut 225 employees in March, a reduction of nearly 3% of its workforce, amid federal and state budget cuts.