Two teams from the University of Cambridge are among ten winners in a competition to bring breast cancer treatments to market.
Two teams from the University of Cambridge are among ten winners in a competition to bring forgotten National Institutes of Health (NIH) breast cancer research to light.
The Breast Cancer Startup Challenge, the first of its kind, is looking to commercialise 10 technologies which the NIH has deemed to have high potential to benefit to breast cancer treatment, but are yet to be further developed. Run by US-based organisations The Centre for Advancing Innovation (CAI), the Avon Foundation for Women, and National Cancer Institute (NCI), a part of the NIH, the competition’s ten winning teams will receive a $5,000 award to begin building their startups.
The teams will be introduced to venture capitalists and funding bodies to secure further funding – a crucial step as drug development can cost upwards of $1 billion. The teams, which are equally comprised of business, legal, scientific, engineering, and computer science students, will also receive entrepreneurial mentorship.
Grecia Gonzalez, a Gates Cambridge scholar involved with one of the teams, was personally affected by breast cancer after her mother passed away last year after her initial symptoms were not regarded as serious by her doctor. The technology Gonzalez’s team is now working on allows for earlier detection through changes in the genes caused by breast cancer.
Gonzalez said: Grecia Gonzalez says: “When my mother passed away, I was devastated. But this competition became an opportunity to channel that difficult experience into a project that will hopefully go on to have a positive impact on breast cancer treatment and peoples’ lives. I couldn’t be happier to be taking this forward with my team.”
Douglas Lowy, NCI deputy director, added: “NCI has always had a strong interest in fostering young investigators and the fact that this challenge pairs each student team with entrepreneur-mentors to assist in the development of the business plans is another example of how we can bring new ideas and energy to cancer research.”
