homehome Home chatchat Notifications


Billionaire Sean Parker donates $250 million to accelerate breakthrough cancer immunotherapies

A Silicon Valley billionaire who made a fortunate investing in Facebook wants to beat cancer once and for all.

Tibi Puiu
April 13, 2016 @ 4:22 pm

share Share

You might know him as the slick Silicon Valley investor who helped Zuckerberg uproot the most important social network on the planet, but did you know Sean Parker is actually one of the most generous philanthropists in the tech space? His most recent effort involves $250 million of his own money and an unprecedented collaboration between six leading cancer centers. The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy will focus on the latest breakthroughs in the line of immunotherapy against cancer. The end goal is to beat cancer, once and for good.

Sean Parker

Sean Parker. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

“About half of all cancers, if you catch them early enough are readily treatable with chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. The other 50% are likely going to kill you,” Parker told Fortune in advance of the announcement. “Immunotherapy is the first breakthrough in recent memory that doesn’t just offer some incremental three to six months average life extension. It offers the possibility to beat cancer.”

The 36-year-old made a multi-billion fortune by launching and investing in various startups, including Napster (remember that?), Facebook (Parker was the first investor) and Spotify among others. He is still active in the tech space, but also in philanthropy having invested over $600 million since 2005 through the Parker Foundation.

Most of the money goes to life sciences, with a focus on cancer research. The newly founded Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy will join leading scientists from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Stanford Medicine, the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, San Francisco, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Immunotherapy is pretty huge because cancer cells are very good at dodging the immune system’s defence. These therapies use solutions that  improve, target, or restore immune system function thereby stopping or slowing the growth of cancer cells and even helping the immune system destroy the cancer cells. Basically, the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy will fund the “high risk best ideas that may not get funded by the government,” says Jeffrey Bluestone, a prominent immunologist and former University of California, San Francisco official who now heads the institute.

Infographic by Asian Scientist.

Parker’s beef with current research is that, while survival rates have gone up, these are painfully slow. The five-year survival rate for lung cancer has gone up  from just over 13% to about 17%.since 1995. Now, with so much funding and a dedicated team focused on improving sharing and collaborative progress between the involved parties, scientists are free to make some real breakthroughs.

“My belief, my sincere belief, is that this is very early days for cancer immunotherapy, and that most of the breakthroughs are still to come,” said Parker. “We have a proof of concept that this works in certain cancers, and now the hard work of expanding immunotherapy to many cancers begins.”

Hats off to Mr. Parker.We need more generous people like him or Tej Kohli, who can funnel some of their vast wealth towards making the world a better place.

share Share

What happens in your brain when your mind goes completely blank — neuroscientists say it's a distinct mental state

Mind blanking isn’t daydreaming. It's something more akin to meditation — but not quite the same.

The World's Oldest Known Ant Is A 113-Million-Year-Old Hell Ant with Scythe Jaws

A remarkable find for ant history was made, not in the field but in a drawer.

Your Cells Can Hear You — And It Could Be Important for Fat Cells

Researchers explore the curious relationship between sound and gene expression in cell cultures.

16,000-Year-Old Dog-Like Skeleton Found in France Raises Haunting Questions

Cared for like a companion, or killed like prey?

Japanese Scientists Just Summoned Lightning with a Drone. Here’s Why

The drone is essentially a mobile, customizable, lightning rod.

Tiny Chinese Satellite Sent Hack-Proof Quantum Messages 12,900 Kilometers Through Space. Is a Quantum Internet Around the Corner?

The US and Europe are now racing to catch up to China.

Cats Came Bearing Gods: Religion and Trade Shaped the Rise of the Domestic Cat in Europe

Two groundbreaking studies challenge the old narrative that cats followed early farmers into Europe.

The People of Carthage Weren’t Who We Thought They Were

The Punic people had almost no genetic ties to Phoenicians, even though the latter founded the great city of Carthage.

RFK Jr loves raw milk. Now, he's suspending milk quality tests due to Trump cuts

Imagine pouring a glass of milk for your child and wondering if it’s safe.

A Roman gladiator died fighting a lion in England and his 1,800-year-old skeleton proves it

It's the first-ever evidence of man-lion combat found in the Roman period.