Sean Parker, the founder of Napster and first president of Facebook, has donated $250m in a bid to place immunotherapy top of the list in cancer treatments.
Advertisement
Sean Parker echoed that in a news release, saying, “We believe that the creation of a new funding and research model can overcome numerous obstacles that now prevent research breakthroughs”. Parker, a frequent investor in startups and former executive general partner of Founders Fund Management LLC, earlier gave $24 million to create a center for allergy research at Stanford, $10 million to seek a cure for type 1 diabetes, and $4.5 million to help UCSF researchers pursue elimination of malaria.
It was announced on 13 April 2016 by Mr. Parker and aims in developing better cancer treatment and encouraging collaboration between major research houses in the field.
The proposed Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy will collaborate with over 40 laboratories and 300 renowned researchers and immunologists hail from all over the world.
Researchers for decades have been banking on the promise of immunotherapy, but it has finally become a reality in recent years with the approval of new drugs to treat melanoma and other cancers, with a host of other therapies in the pipeline.
The Parker Institute will focus on the emerging field of cancer immunotherapy, which uses the body’s own immune system to fight cancer cells.
A committee with members from each cancer center as well as representatives of the Parker Institute will review potential licensing deals covering patented discoveries made by the cancer center researchers, which would be shared 50-50 with the institute.
Stanford Medicine will be one of the institute’s six university-based research centers, an announcement that was marked with celebration on the Stanford campus.
Parker, who likens life sciences to the way the internet sector in the mid-90s felt to him, said that company controversy in the biotech sector should not impact investor appetite. In defense, Parker says a central principle behind the institute will be “freedom of innovation in concert with collaboration”.
Nano Visser/AP Parker (l.) and Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy president Jeffery Bluestone (r.) are working to speed development of cancer-fighting immunotherapy drugs. He is still active in the tech space, but also in philanthropy having invested over $600 million since 2005 through the Parker Foundation.
Immunotherapy is presently thought as one of the most challenging yet exciting areas of cancer research due to the number of patients cured by so-called miracle cells incorporated in experimental drugs.
“The common understanding is that all these people have always worked together and anybody who works on cancer is happy to share all their research and help each other out”, said Hanks, 59, whose wife, the actress and singer Rita Wilson, underwent a double mastectomy a year ago.
While many immunotherapy treatments remain experimental, many studies have shown remarkable results. The Pretty Woman producer died of breast cancer in 2011.
“I have no doubt this will allow us to make progress, and to make it much more quickly”, he said.
Advertisement
CRI CEO O’Donnell-Tormey said that right now, cancer immunotherapy researchers need to find specific antigens, or toxins that elicit a response by the immune system, to target.
