Each year worldwide, there are 14 million new cancer cases and 8.2 million cancer deaths. And without a major breakthrough, by 2030 each year there will be 21.7 million new cancer cases and 13 million cancer deaths worldwide.

Cancer immunotherapy offers a new way forward. It is one of the most important medical advances of our time, and the first approach with the potential to generate long-lasting regressions for all types and stages of cancer. It harnesses the body’s own powerful immune system and mobilizes its highly refined disease-fighting arsenal to eliminate cancer cells. Cancer immunotherapies overwhelm cancer’s evasive strategies, to ensure that a powerful, precise and adaptable immune attack is focused on tumors anywhere in the body.

Billionaire Napster founder Sean Parker is turning his disruptive approach to cancer research. The hacker-turned-philanthropist's Parker Foundation has now announced a $250 million grant to create an institute devoted to cancer immunotherapy.

“Our model is to enable the most ambitious research to be done by the best people across the field,” Mr. Parker told the Wall Street Journal. “We’re concentrating funding around one area where we can have a huge impact.”

The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, created from the grant, is bringing together leading immunologists and cancer centers, including Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Stanford University, UCLA, UCSF, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the University of Pennsylvania, according to the foundation.

Unlike the siloing of different research efforts that frequently occurs now, in which researchers compete rather than collaborate, this initiative will take a more collaborative approach. "Over 40 laboratories and more than 300 researchers and immunologists from the country’s leading cancer centers are part of the network," the foundation stated. It added that "in a unique agreement, the administration of all intellectual property will be shared, enabling all researchers to have immediate access to a broad swath of core discoveries."

"Any breakthrough made at one center is immediately available to another center without any kind of IP (intellectual property) entanglements or bureaucracy," Parker told Reuters in an interview.

The institute is focusing on a triad of research areas, including T-cell modification to target tumors, methods to boost immune response to present immunotherapy modalities, and efforts to find new tumor targets to attack.

"Very little progress has been made over the last several decades," Parker told the news organization in reference to today's cancer-drug efforts. "Average life expectancy has only increased three to six months with some of these drugs that cost billions to develop."

The institute’s new approach to intellectual property will ease the demands on researchers to find money and deal with patents. The effort is "paradigm shifting," Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center's Dr. Jedd Wolchok, told the wire service. "I have no doubt this will allow us to make progress, and to make it much more quickly," he added.

Parker told Reuters that the death of his friend, Hollywood producer Laura Ziskin, "transformed me," raising his awareness of the urgent need to re-imagine the approach to cancer research.

Ziskin, who was behind such smash hits as "Pretty Woman" and was also the found of Stand Up To Cancer, died in 2011.

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