Genesis Oncology Trust-funded researchers win prestigious US competition
Two New Zealanders, who completed their PhDs with funding from the Genesis Oncology Trust, are members of a joint team
from Auckland and Stanford Universities to gain funding that will help accelerate the commercialization of their
innovative breast cancer therapy.
Dr Francis Hunter received a Postgraduate Scholarship Award from the Genesis Oncology Trust in 2010. His colleague, Dr
Graeme Fielder received his in 2006. After completing his PhD, Dr Hunter was awarded a Fullbright Platinum Triangle
Scholarship and is now studying for an MBA at Stanford University in San Francisco, USA. However, he maintained research
links with colleagues at Auckland University, particularly with Dr Fielder in relation to the development of a
therapeutic armed antibody to treat breast cancer.
Graeme and Francis, together with a colleague at Stanford University, entered the Breast Cancer Startup Challenge, which
aims to commercialize technologies relating to breast cancer care. The Challenge has $US250,000 funding from Avon
Foundation for Women, and is run in partnership with the National Cancer Institute, and the Center for Advancing
Innovation (CAI), both in the USA.
Two hundred teams asked to participate, and 46 were selected to compete from the world’s top Universities including
Duke, Caltech, George Washington, John Hopkins, and Stanford. In total, 478 people participated in the competition.
Given the number of teams and people on each team, this challenge is one of the largest global university business plan
challenges to date.
Genesis Oncology Trust Programme Manager, Douglas Ormrod, said a cornerstone of the GOT grants programme is the annual
Postgraduate Scholarship Award which provides three years of fees and a stipend to allow graduate students to undertake
a PhD. Eleven scholarships have been awarded to date. Overall more than $10 million had been distributed by the Trust to
cancer research and education since 2002.
“All successful candidates have met our long term expectation, but some exceed expectations as with Graeme Fielder and
Francis Hunter,” said Dr Ormrod.
Rosemarie Truman, founder and Chief Executive of the CAI, said, “Today, progress in breast cancer research depends on
step-change advances in technology and on paradigm-shifting strategies to rapidly bring these advances to market so they
can be used by scientists and physician.”
The Breast Cancer Startup Challenge is comprised of 10 research technologies that were judged to show great promise to
advance breast cancer research. These 10 inventions were developed at the National Cancer Institute in the United States
and at an Avon Foundation for Women-funded university lab and include therapeutics, diagnostics, prognostics, one
device, one vaccine, one delivery system and one health IT invention.
Teams of business, legal, medical/scientific, engineering, computer science students and seasoned entrepreneurs have
evaluated these technologies to create business plans and start new companies to develop and commercialize them.
The team of Drs Fielder, Hunter and Mitchell Ho from Stanford will receive licence and seed funding to take their
potential therapeutic antibody to the next level. The laboratory research work will be carried out in both Auckland and
the USA.
For more details of the competition: www.breastcancerstartupchallenge.com
ENDS