Facebook's founding president Sean Parker teams up with the Cancer Research Institute to use algorithms to figure out the genetic markers in cancer called neoantigens.
By partnering with the Cancer Research Institute, Sean Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy can work with more than 30 different pharmaceutical, cancer research groups, biotech, and academic institutions, Tech Crunch reported.
Some of the most notable institutes that will collaborate with the Sean Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy are big biotech company Genentech Inc., the University of California in San Francisco, and Menlo Park's Personalis Inc., which is a start up company that focuses on next generation DNA sequencing, Biz Journal reported.
Other big institutions that are involved in this innovative and bold endeavour are the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the Washington Univesity Shool of Medicine, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Caltech.
The neoantigens are found only in cancerous tumors, which are also specific to certain people. This gives researchers something to focus on in developing new immunotherapy treatments. According to Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy Vice President for clinical development Ramy Ibrahim, targeting these neoantigen will bring immunotherapy research to a whole new level.
According to Parker, bringing the best neoantigen research organizations in the world into one big project to accelerate the development of personalized immunotherapies for cancer is one of the major reasons why he launched the Parker Institute. This will not only leverage the amazing talents of each organization but will also take advantage of the unlimited potentials of bioinformatics.
The Parker Institute has already been working on collaborative efforts with six various research universities and other cancer institutes.
But working with Cancer Research Institute is meant to specifically focus on targeting the neoantigens through leveraging the power of bioinformatics.
Each institute taking part in this research will be given genetic sequences from tissues that are both cancerous and non-cancerous. Once they have the materials, they will be tasked to find and validate which of these tissues can be recognizable by T-cells.
Parker has given his research institute a donation of $250 to help the best researchers in the country get as much access as they need from the latest information on the cancer immunotherapy.
