MaryLou and George Boone (center) recently gave $2 million to the Keck School, including support for the basic research of Michael Jakowec (left) and Giselle Petzinger right).

Photo/Jon Nalick

George and MaryLou Boone, USC alumni and benefactors to the Keck School of Medicine, have recently made two separate $1 million gifts.

The first gift establishes the George and MaryLou Boone Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Research Center and supports the research of Michael Jakowec and Giselle Petzinger, both assistant professors of neurology.

Jakowec and Petzinger focus their research on neuroplasticity and the benefits of exercise in managing Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders.

The gift will help fund their current laboratory research and allow the researchers to explore additional avenues of study.

The second $1 million gift endows the George N. and MaryLou Boone Professorship in Medical Excellence. The professorship was created based upon an innovative model for rewarding and preserving quality patient care in an era of managed health care.

George Boone, a graduate of the USC School of Dentistry, was a practicing orthodontist in San Marino until 1969, when he went into the real estate business.

He is a charter member of the School of Urban and Regional Planning’s Lusk Center for Real Estate Development.

Boone and his wife, MaryLou, also a graduate of the School of Dentistry, are founding members of the USC Presidential Associates and have endowed the George and MaryLou Boone Chair in Craniofacial Molecular Biology at the dental school. George Boone is also a Life Trustee of USC.