Insignia Owner Sets Lofty Goal for Cancer Research Donations

Insignia Prime Steak & Sushi , and if the restaurant's monetary goal is not met, restaurant owner Anthony Scotto will donate $50,000.

Scotto said this during a Wednesday night meeting at the restaurant along with Dr. James Watson of the laboratory, laboratory board member Nelson DeMille, and Insignia managing partner Joseph Bruton, who is overseeing the donation project.

“Long Island has been really great to me and I’d like to give something back,” Scotto said Wednesday night. “Cancer affects everybody, young, old, I don’t think there’s a family that’s not affected by it, [and] I think that the lab does some great work.”

DeMille saluted Scotto and Watson’s creativity in finding a unique fundraising method for the laboratory.

“In this kind of environment, this economic environment, to raise money for any kind of cause you’ve got to be creative now. People just aren’t writing checks anymore,” he said.

DeMille jokingly added that Wednesday was his first time visiting the restaurant but he would be back this week to see some of his check go back to the lab.

Watson, recipient of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, said the time is now to find a cure.

“I hope [the money will] go directly toward trying to cure cancer as opposed to studying it,” he said. “We’ve been studying it for a long time, we’re moving toward trying to cure it.”

opened to the public Monday.