Initiative Aimed at Helping to Improve Care for 10 Million Cancer Patients by 2020
On September 15, GE’s CEO and Chairman Jeff Immelt announced an ambitious plan to strengthen the fight against cancer on multiple fronts around the world. By accelerating innovation and helping to improve access to screening and treatment, GE and its financial partners have set the goal of helping clinicians deliver improved, more personalized care to 10 million cancer patients by 2020.
“Cancer renders itself to a systems approach, and we think there’s a tremendous opportunity to marry diagnostics to targeted therapies. The idea is to make cancer a chronic illness, not a death sentence,” Immelt told an audience of cancer doctors, researchers, scientists, financial partners, patient advocates, media representatives, and GE employees during a panel discussion held in New York City. Three key aspects of the initial phase of the campaign are:
* A new $100 million global open innovation challenge. The challenge, launched in collaboration with prominent venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Venrock Capital, Mohr Davidow, and MPM Capital, aims to find and fund new ideas to advance breast cancer diagnostics and treatment, particularly for triple negative breast cancer, a more aggressive form of cancer that is typically less responsive to standard treatments. Researchers, innovators, and entrepreneurs are also challenged to devise new ways to map molecular similarities between breast cancer and other solid tumors, allowing for more accurate diagnosis and more personalized therapies. Submissions will be accepted through November 20.
GE Healthymagination VP Mike Barber explained that the competition was modeled after GE’s successful ecomagination challenge, which generated 5,000 submissions, of which more than 20 received funding. “Defeating breast cancer will require cutting-edge technology,” said Nancy Brinker, founder and CEO of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. “We’re extremely excited about the potential for game-changing discoveries to help end suffering and death from breast cancer.”
* A $1 billion commitment to cancer solutions. GE also announced plans to dedicate $1 billion of its total research and development budget over the next five years to expand its advanced cancer diagnostic and molecular imaging capabilities, along with technologies for cancer research and manufacturing biopharmaceuticals. Being able to analyze an individual patient’s cancer on the molecular level, explained Dr. Mauro Ferrari, CEO and President of The Methodist Hospital Research Institute, would be “a huge opportunity to personalize treatment and help transport chemotherapy to the right target, which could have a big impact on breast cancer.”
GE Clarient, a cancer diagnostics company, is currently investigating a new biomarker, TLE3, to help identify patients who will not respond to the cancer drug Taxane, thus potentially sparing them side effects of a therapy that’s not likely to benefit them. TLE3 is being evaluated for breast, ovarian and lung cancer, and GE Clarient hopes to have those tests ready by 2013. “When you’ve seen one cancer, you really have only seen one cancer, because at the molecular level, each is so different,” said Ron Andrews from GE Clarient.
* Collaborations to expand global access to cancer care. GE is partnering with Susan G. Komen for the Cure to bring breast cancer screening to more women, starting with programs in China, Saudi Arabia, and Wyoming. In Saudi Arabia, GE plans to deploy two mobile breast cancer screening units in Riyadh City with the goal of screening 10,000 women, starting in October. The company also hopes to launch an open innovation challenge for Saudi women, aimed at identifying sustainable methods to improve breast cancer screening in that country.
Connect the Dots
To learn more, read “GE Launches New Commitment to Accelerate Cancer Fight,” on GE Reports. Also check out GE’s visualization of the global Twitter conversation about breast cancer. For more news about GE Clarient technology, click here.
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