Cancer Research UK has received its largest ever donation - £10m from a supporter who wishes to remain anonymous.

The donation has been made to the charity’s Create the Change campaign, which aims to raise £100m for the Francis Crick Institute in London. The same donor also gave £10m to the University of Southampton to build a cancer immunology unit that will have links to the Institute. It was also the university's largest ever donation. 

In 2011 Cancer Research UK launched the campaign to raise £100m by 2015, when the Francis Crick Institute is due to open. It is a registered charity that will carry out medical research and was set up by consortium of six medical research organisations – the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust, UCL, Imperial College London and Kings College London.

Overall the consortium will invest around £650m in the project but Cancer Research UK is the only fundraising partner.

Dr Harpal Kumar, Cancer Research UK’s chief executive, said: "We’re extremely grateful for these extraordinarily generous donations. The gift for the Francis Crick Institute accounts for 10 per cent of the total we need to raise and takes us a huge step closer towards achieving our ambition of creating this world-class institute to help us beat cancer.” 

The Create the Change Campaign is the largest capital campaign the charity has run and the first time it has actively sought donations from outside of the UK. A spokeswoman said the charity could not reveal how close it was to reaching its target.