Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, and while significant progress has been made in recent years, we still don’t understand its complex mechanisms and how best to target its diverse forms. Unravelling the intricate genetic and molecular interactions involved in cancer development and progression, identifying novel targets for therapy, and refining early detection techniques will require more investmentsin basic, that is, fundamental research. Over the past decades, public and private cancer funding has been disproportionately directed towards applied research and clinical trials, with basic research relatively underfunded. But such research is the foundation for ultimately developing more effective and targeted treatments and defining preventive measures. Advancing basic research within cancer is a funding opportunity for private funders to contribute towards a world where cancer no longer poses such a formidable threat to human health.
Current Efforts
The recognition of this funding gap has motivated some philanthropic organizations to fund collaborative basic research in cancer. One such example is Sean Parker, who established the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in 2016 to accelerate the development of breakthrough immune therapies by funding collaborative research, fostering innovation, and supporting top scientists in the field. The requirement of collaboration, i.e. sharing discoveries freely among the recipient organizations, recognizes the need for diverse viewpoints and foci to view cancer comprehensively.
A different approach is encouraging and supporting scientists specifically to ask fundamental questions about cancer. An example of this strategy is the one developed by Olivia Tournay-Flatto and funded by Bill Ackman and Neri Oxman, the Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators in Cancer Research, an award that allows early-career scientists to test their risky and bold ideas.
Recently, Science Philanthropy Alliance’s external science advisor, Shirley Tilghman, convened a group of experts at CIFAR who identified investigating the dark genome in cancer as a funding priority. The MacMillan Family Foundation provided funding to conduct this analysis and launched a technology development program at the New York Genome Center. This program aims to delve into the non-coding cancer genome and epigenome, furthering our basic understanding of cancer.
The Next Frontier
Cancer is an incredibly complex and heterogeneous disease, involving numerous genetic and molecular interactions. Below are areas to be explored within basic cancer research that the Science Philanthropy Alliance has identified as being particularly promising:
- Cellular heterogeneity within a tumor
- Effect of microenvironment on cancer spread and progress
- Immune cell interactions with cancer
- AI/Machine Learning application on existing databases of cancer mutations
- Etiology of rare cancers
About the Underfunded Areas in the Research Enterprise Series
The Science Philanthropy Alliance aims to increase philanthropic support for basic scientific research. Drawing on the expertise of its philanthropic advising team, distinguished external science advisors and a membership base of leading science funders, the Alliance provides curated advising services and learning opportunities to help philanthropists expand the world’s knowledge and lay the scientific groundwork for lifesaving, economy-changing breakthroughs. This post is part of a series on underfunded areas where philanthropy has the opportunity to catalyze scientific research.
How We Define Underfunded
Our definition of underfunded has three aspects and one or more can be used to characterize a field or area of research as such:
- Funding is insufficient for the need, i.e. the amount of funding is too small for the scope of the problem.
- Ineligible for other sources of funding, e.g. too risky for public money or other funding sources, or not commercially viable.
- High potential impact of funding; a breakthrough discovery with highly significant implications for a question or field.
For more information about this funding opportunity, contact Bishakha Mona at bmona@sciphil.org.
