MemorialSloanKetteringCancerCenter
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Napster co-founder's new institute aims to beat cancer
Sean Parker is known for many things: co-founding Napster, joining Facebook in its early days, starting charities and creating his share of technology startups. If all goes well, though, he'll also add "helped cure cancer" to that list. He just founded the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, a $250 million effort to fight cancer by relying on the body's immune system. The organization will unite six universities (covering 40 labs and over 300 scientists), encouraging them to share research rather than compete. As Parker puts it, humanity is on the "bleeding edge" of what you can do with synthetic biology... it might just need a nudge to turn those findings into real-world treatments.
Watson lends a helping hand to cancer research, partners with Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Supercomputers at the forefront of medical practice? The notion is by no means a stretch of the imagination. Yet, research of this kind mostly goes unnoticed -- that is, unless the computational wizardry handholding these advancements belongs to Jeopardy!'s AI king. That's right, Watson, IBM's bold-face named powerhouse of silicon wizardry, will be made available as a development tool for oncologists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering to deliver "individualized cancer diagnostic and treatment recommendations" derived from the center's case note database. Drawing upon that raw processing power, field practitioners will purportedly have access to a wealth of the latest therapeutic advances which would, normally, take too long to spread outside of specialized facilities. The agreement is not the first of its kind, as this time last year IBM had announced a similar partnership with Columbia University, although no further news has come from that union. MSKCC, for its part, does have concrete plans to move its small pilot program forward, with a target launch set for later this year and plans to expand the project's reach by end of 2013. Jump past the break for the official presser.
