With $250M Immunotherapy Donation, Parker Aims To Crash Through Bureaucratic Research Roadblocks
Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster, is creating the San Francisco-based Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, which will focus on collaboration among scientists in their efforts to unlock the body's own immune system to fight cancer.
The New York Times:
Facebook And Napster Pioneer To Start Cancer Immunotherapy Effort
Sean Parker was a pioneer in music sharing when he co-founded Napster and in social media as the early president of Facebook. Now he wants to pioneer in a field that is already jumping with activity: cancer immunotherapy. Mr. Parker is announcing Wednesday that he is donating $250 million to a new effort that will bring together six leading academic centers to develop ways to unleash patients’ own immune systems to fight cancer. (Pollack, 4/13)
Reuters:
Sean Parker Sets Up $250 Million Cancer Immunotherapy Collaboration
"Any breakthrough made at one center is immediately available to another center without any kind of IP (intellectual property) entanglements or bureaucracy," Parker, the co-founder of music-sharing website Napster and the first president of Facebook, told Reuters in an interview. The institute will focus on the emerging field of cancer immunotherapy, which harnesses the body's immune system to fight cancer cells. (Beasley, 4/13)
USA Today:
Billionaire Announces $250 Million In Cancer Immunotherapy Funding
Parker's enormous cash infusion is the largest ever for cancer immunotherapy — and one of the largest ever for cancer research — and comes three months after President Obama called for a $1 billion federal cancer research program that he dubbed a “moonshot." The estate of the billionaire shipping magnate Daniel Ludwig donated $540 million to six cancer centers in 2014 and Nike co-founder Phil Knight pledged $500 million to cancer researchers at Oregon Health & Science University in 2013. (O'Donnell, 4/13)
The Associated Press:
Collaborative Institute Aims To Speed Cancer Drug Creation
“Everybody knows that we need to move forward and change the model” for cancer research, Jeffrey Bluestone, an immunology researcher and the institute’s CEO, told The Associated Press Tuesday. “The goal here is to rapidly move our discoveries to patients.” For decades, fiercely competitive and secretive drugmakers protected their money-making discoveries with patents and lawsuits. Academic researchers likewise often guarded their work closely until it was published because their promotions, awards and sometimes revenue from licensing patents depended on individual achievement. That often slowed progress. (Johnson, 4/13)
The Washington Post:
$250 Million, 300 Scientists And 40 Labs: Sean Parker’s Revolutionary Project To ‘Solve’ Cancer
“Cancer immunotherapy is such an incredibly complex field, and for every answer it seems to pose 10 more questions. I’m an entrepreneur so I wish some of these questions had been answered yesterday,” Parker said. He describes the effort as a way to remove obstacles related to bureaucracy and personality that will allow scientists to borrow from each other’s labs unencumbered. The researchers will continue to be based at their home institutions but will receive additional funding and access to other resources, including specialized data scientists and genetic engineering equipment set to become part of the nonprofit Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in San Francisco. (Cha, 4/13)
Los Angeles Times:
Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Launches Initiative To Advance Cancer Immunotherapies
Specifically, Parker said his institute will place its initial bets on three broad areas of research: developing a new generation of T-cell therapies; investigating new uses for, and effective new combinations of, the kinds of "checkpoint inhibitor" drugs that have already proved effective for skin, lung and kidney cancers; and improving the effectiveness and potential uses for vaccines and cellular therapies in fighting a wider array of cancers. (Healy, 4/12)
The San Francisco Chronicle:
Entrepreneur Sean Parker Creates Cancer Immunotherapy Effort
Billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sean Parker has donated $250 million to launch an effort, based in San Francisco, that combines the forces of six top cancer research centers nationwide to develop treatments in the growing field of cancer immunotherapy, which uses the power of the body’s immune system to fight disease. (Colliver, 4/13)
The San Francisco Business Times:
Tech Legend Sean Parker Seeds 'New, Crazy' Cancer Immunotherapy Projects With $250M Gift
A potential $1 billion effort to accelerate ways to turn the body’s own immune system against cancer — tapping top researchers at UCSF and Stanford University — got a $250 million kickstart Wednesday from tech entrepreneur and philanthropist Sean Parker. (Leuty, 4/12)
The San Francisco Business Journal:
Meet The Big Names Behind Sean Parker's Cancer Immunotherapy Moonshot
The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy has rolled out a who's-who list of researchers across the United States as directors of its six academic-based centers, board of directors, advisors or steering committee members. (Leuty, 4/12)