What a great announcement this week relative to cancer research!

Napster founder Sean Parker has donated $250 million to put cancer research on the fast track, following recent breakthroughs with such treatments in an area known as immunotherapy. That process was recently made famous by the sucessful treatment of brain tumors in former President Jimmy Carter. His problem stemmed initially from melanoma.

A story released nationally Wednesday stated: “Everybody knows that we need to move forward and change the model for cancer research.” These comments come from immunology researcher Jefferey Bluestone who is the CEO of Park Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.

Quite often we hear of advances made in cancer research but then it’s years before these treatments are generally available, although we may get reports about clinical trials.

The story touched on the slowness of new treatment developments that often are caused by patenting manuevers and other actions where delays link to profits.

In Parker’s concept, this process can be speeded up by marrying the efforts of major universities where most of the cancer research takes place.

Some 300 scientiests are initially involved in this project. We might expect that number will grow as this new research model, called a “virtual sandbox” approach gains success and attention.

We might also hope that the generous attitude of Sean Parker will cause other super rich business people to see this type of giving as a great opportunity to lift cancer treatment and cures leaps and bounds above the past decade.

Wouldn’t it be nice if such an approach to better health and longer life became a national initiative in the magnitude of our commitment to put man on the moon?

Hurrah for Sean Parker!