Guest blogger Nancy Beth Jackson is a New York City-based journalist who writes for the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and the Miami Herald as well as newsletters, magazines and websites. She holds a Ph.D. in international studies with a specialty in international adaptation of technology.
If you really let your imagination go free, how do you think we could beat breast cancer? How could we spot it earlier? How could we multiply and personalize options for treatment?
Here are some ideas that have already been suggested:
* manufacturing a bra that would screen for malignant cells by measuring how hot they were
* targeting and eliminating whatever it is that tumors need to grow
* making cancer drugs cheaper by using a plant-based technology
These suggestions are among the first submitted to the GE healthymagination Challenge, which is looking for breakthrough ideas from anyone, anywhere. That includes businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators and students (you have to be 18 or older).
In exchange, GE and its venture capital partners are pledging up to $100 million to find and fund the best ways to improve breast cancer diagnosis and give more treatment choices to more people.
This brainstorming is part of a much larger initiative, a global campaign GE unveiled in mid-September when it committed $1 billion to fight cancer on multiple fronts over the next five years. Standing to benefit by 2020 are more than 10 million cancer patients worldwide.
The deadline for this round of the open innovation challenge is November 20, but the healthymagination Challenge will announce another early in 2012. Understanding the complexity of breast cancer, the Challenge right now is concentrating on ways to better understand triple negative cancer and similarities between breast cancer and other solid tumors.
Triple negative or basal-like breast cancer accounts for up to 20 per cent of all breast cancers. It is an aggressive tumor, less likely to be spotted on your annual mammogram. So far it lacks a specific, targeted treatment. Anyone can get it, but most often it is African-American and Hispanic women, women born with gene mutations, and young women. African-Americans who develop breast cancer have a 20 to 40 percent chance that it is triple negative or lacking three “receptors” or biomarkers in cells that control cellular growth or death.
The GE healthymagination Challenge is modeled on GE’s highly successful ecomagination Challenge, a $200 million innovation experiment in which all sorts of creative thinkers from around the world shared their best ideas on how to improve our energy future. The result was over 5,000 ideas submitted from about 150 countries and $34 million in investments and partnerships by GE.
CONNECT THE DOTS
To find out who’s talking about breast cancer right now, check out GE’s visualization of the global Twitter conversation about breast cancer. For more about triple-negative breast cancer, download a free brochure from the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation.
Be sure to follow and support the breakthrough ideas initiative and maybe even add one of your own!
PREVIOUS POST
