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Sean Parker Announces $250 Million Grant To Fight Cancer (cnn.com)

Posted by msmash on from the fight-against-cancer dept.

Robert Mclean, reporting for CNN: Silicon Valley billionaire Sean Parker announced a $250 million grant on Wednesday to establish the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, which aims to increase collaboration among researchers and accelerate the development of immune therapies. Immunotherapy uses the body's own immune system to help fight cancer, and is considered one of the most promising areas of emerging cancer research. More than 40 laboratories and more than 300 researchers and immunologists will participate in the project, including six top cancer centers: Memorial Sloan Kettering, University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas, Stanford, UCLA and UCSF. The Institute said that under the program, intellectual property licensing, data collection and clinical trials across multiple centers will be unified for the first time. The administration of all intellectual property will be shared across teams.

18 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. Cancer is doomed... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    250 million??? Dr Evil is impressed.

    1. Re:Cancer is doomed... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      $250 Million is nothing. We've already spent 100 times that amount and have little to show for it.

      In the early 1990s i read an article which claimed that cancer research was mostly a scam. Not so much a deliberate scam but people were allegedly being overly conservative and not pursuing every possible avenue, because if you're actually successful then all those billions for research go away. At the time, I dismissed the article as just conspiracy theory crackpottery, (much like the claims of automobile engines that can get a gazillion miles per gallon of gasoline but are being hidden and suppressed by the evil oil companies). 25 years later, I'm not so sure about that.

      What changed my mind was having cancer myself. But I was lucky. My cancer was confined to one spot, only requiring a couple of simple 12 hour surgeries and a few lengthy hospital stays, But most people aren't so lucky. If your cancer can't be easily removed like mine was, you're pretty much screwed, and that is why the number of people dying of cancer today is greater than it was 20 years ago, despite having spent Billions on "research". Of course, it might be better if we spent those billions on actually doing something, instead of spending it on pink ribbons, yellow wristbands, 5k races, and Yet-Another-Foundation with the accompanying fancy office buildings and big executive salaries.

      Having survived cancer, I am appalled at what a massive scam the cancer charity business really is.

    2. Re:Cancer is doomed... by alvinrod · · Score: 1

      While there are plenty of "foundations" that collect a lot of money that doesn't go to research or doing fuck all other than allowing the CEO to enrich themselves and friends, cancer research (as in scientists developing and testing methods of preventing or eliminating cancer) is pretty legitimate. It's a difficult problem to solve, but we're slowly getting there and even when we fail, we're still learning new things that might have other applications.

      I also don't think the medical professionals researching a cure are sandbagging because they're worried about job security.If they find a cure for cancer, there's going to be something else that kills people that we'll try to spend money preventing instead. The last enemy to be destroyed is death and we'll never quit trying.

    3. Re:Cancer is doomed... by arth1 · · Score: 2

      $250 Million is nothing. We've already spent 100 times that amount and have little to show for it.

      Yes, 250 million is a drop in the ocean.

      Instead of spending all the money on prolonging life and suffering, how about accepting death and spending money on improving life?

    4. Re:Cancer is doomed... by Anonymous+Cow+Ward · · Score: 1

      A lot of cancer charities are scams, but the research is, definitively, not.

      Part of the problem with cancer research is that we keep finding ways in which cancers we thought were the same are, in fact, different and need to be treated differently (sometimes). Immunotherapy, however, has already had some really big successes. Carl June's group has gotten success rates of 90%+ with some leukemias and lymphomas. The main reason we're seeing more and more people get/die from cancer is that cancer is sort of inevitable if you live long enough, and we're getting better at treating and preventing other things that could kill you first.

      It's also worth pointing out that many cancer researchers have lost friends and family members to cancer. A lot of them are actually working hard; sure, if they succeed, they have to look for a new job, but that's really not so bad in the long run.

      --
      Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
  2. "Bob Dylan doesn't go in the Punk_Rock folder!" by Pseudonymous+Powers · · Score: 2

    Silicon Valley billionaire [and Napster founder] Sean Parker... establish[ed] the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy,...under the program, intellectual property licensing... will be unified for the first time. The administration of all intellectual property will be shared across teams.

    "Napsterman To Copyright Cure For Cancer", huh? If they succeed, karma dictates that pretty soon everyone will hoarding two full lifetimes worth of Parker Institutes cancer cures, even for cancers that they don't have and have no particular need to cure.

    1. Re:"Bob Dylan doesn't go in the Punk_Rock folder!" by Anonymous+Cow+Ward · · Score: 1

      Oh yeah?

      --
      Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
  3. won't work, 'cause cancer's contagious by turkeydance · · Score: 1

    it's Settled Science: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02...

    1. Re:won't work, 'cause cancer's contagious by Virtucon · · Score: 1

      please, don't believe anything published in the NYT. Nothing is settled when it comes to cancer except you can get it and in most cases it'll eventually kill you.

      --
      Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
  4. Yet Another Foundation? by KermodeBear · · Score: 2

    Why do people always start their own foundation? It's a duplication of effort. You need to hire people to run things, need to do all the legal stuff, etc., etc. Why not take that money and give it to an existing organization? The pride of having YOUR NAME on the effort?

    --
    Love sees no species.
    1. Re:Yet Another Foundation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Two primary reasons:

      • The overwhelming majority of not for profit organizations are just tax avoidance scams for trust fund babies.
      • If you are going to spend millions of dollars on something you probably want to see it work and properly assume all the other organizations attempting to do the same thing are incompetent, corrupt or both. Sometimes people simply like to run things themselves, especially if they have the personality type that allowed them to accrue such a large sum to begin with.

      The second reason is more commonly used to justify the first, however.

    2. Re:Yet Another Foundation? by arth1 · · Score: 1

      any quite sophisticated backup and recovery mechanism that compensates for file system or file corruption.

      Known since the days of Tacitus, the law of bureaucracy means that the larger an organization grows, the larger the ratio of administrative positions to workers, because the administrative positions also need administrative support. Small companies will have less overhead than big ones.

    3. Re:Yet Another Foundation? by swb · · Score: 1

      Dude, don't you know that startups and can do anything? If you restate a problem into a startup, you'll have at least a working prototype in a few months.

      There's probably some merit to the idea in some ways if you filter out some of the ego and myopia. The older an organization is, the more likely it may be hanging onto old ideas or ways of thinking that can be counter-productive. And the larger an organization is, the more slowly it changes.

  5. Requisite... by Virtucon · · Score: 1

    South Park reference: "And... it's gone..."

    --
    Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
  6. a more prudent investment could be made in reform. by nimbius · · Score: 2

    there are more than 200 cancer treatment centers in the US alone, not counting the inumerable rise of "alternative" treatment centers that forego the scientific method in favour of wreckless naturalism and holistics. Do we need yet another branded expression of a rich mans ego masquerading as anything more than fleeting concern for a personal interest in a likely singular event of cancer? very little attention is paid to the environmental factors --equally inumerable-- that act as either cancer suspect agents or outright carcinogens themselves. Strides have been made in ablating BPA and Lead from our food chain, but more can and should be done to reign in things like Acrylamide and the carte blanc appropriation of nearly every organic and inorganic chemistry development to the amorphous Generally-Regarded-As-Safe (GRAS) monicker so often championed by chemical companies. 250 million dollars applied to strengthening the EPA, the FDA, and legislation designed to protect consumers would do arguably much more to prevent cancer. Reforming the harbingers of the largest cause of preventable disease in the world --major multinational fast and processed food conglomerates-- would surely act more immediately than a pet research institute.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
  7. Re:Advertising, not research by saccade.com · · Score: 1

    If they do find successful therapies, they'll be worth a fortune. This smells more like an investment (granted, a risky one) than a "donation".

  8. hmmm.. by SuperDre · · Score: 1

    after decades of research and billions of dollars spend, I don't believe cancer will be cured, not because it is difficult, but because the farmaceutical industry doesn't want to, it's much more profitable to treat the disease than to actually cure it.. At the moment it looks to me that a lot of people seem to get/have cancer, but as I said I don't see a real future in were we will see it actually cured (even though we already do have the knowledge and technology to actually do it)..

  9. Nice, I suppose by whitroth · · Score: 1

    Of course, the National Cancer Inst, part of the US's National Institutes of Health, has an *annual* budget just for itself of $4.9 *billion*. And a good bit goes to researchers around the US, such as colleges.

                          mark