$1-Million Prize Offered for Cancer Research

Aiming to foster collaboration between researchers and encourage innovative approaches, a new prize will award $1-million for the best idea in cancer research, reports Reuters.

Gary Curhan, from the Harvard Medical School, and Joel Greenblatt and Robert Goldstein, hedge-fund managers at Gotham Capital, worked together to set up the Gotham Prize for Cancer Research.

“Most of the work is incremental just because of the long tradition and because people tend not to pick risks. And you tend to write grants to what you think will get funded as opposed to your most innovative idea,” Dr. Curhan said. “If you want to study something that may be relatively rare, it is not going to be given the same priority as something that is more common such as breast cancer or prostate cancer.”

Entrants will post summaries of their ideas on the prize’s Web site. At the end of the year, judges will decide on the best idea.

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