Sean Parker sets up $250 M US cancer immunotherapy collaboration

The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy will includeover 40 laboratories and more than 300 researchers from six keycancer centres: New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering, StanfordMedicine, the University of California, Los Angeles, theUniversity of California, San Francisco, Houston's University ofTexas MD Anderson and the University of Pennsylvania inPhiladelphia.

The institute will focus on the emerging field of cancerimmunotherapy, which harnesses the body's immune system to fightcancer cells.

"Very little progress has been made over the last severaldecades," Parker said, referring to cancer drug research.

3 key research areas

Parker said the current system of cancer drug developmentdiscouraged the kinds of risk-taking that could lead to a majorbreakthrough.

The new institute "is paradigm shifting," said Dr. JeddWolchok, chief of the melanoma and immunotherapeutics unit atMemorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

"I have no doubt this will allow us to make progress, and tomake it much more quickly," Wolchok said.

Parker said the aim was to maximize the return on investmentby holding off on licensing deals until later in the researchprocess, or even after a drug has been approved by regulators.

Any profits would be funneled back into the institute.

Patented discoveries made by the cancer center researcherswill be shared 50-50 with the institute. A committee withmembers from each cancer center as well as representatives ofthe Parker Institute will review potential licensing deals.

Parker credited his late friend Laura Ziskin, a Hollywoodproducer known for such films as "Pretty Woman" and founder ofStand Up To Cancer, with raising his awareness of the need tooverhaul cancer research. She died of the disease in 2011.