Former Citigroup On Thursday morning, CEO Sandy Weill announced a gift of 50 million US dollars by the Weill Family Foundation to found the Weill Cancer Hub East, a partnership, with research on nutrition and metabolism to develop cancer treatments.
The partnership combines four leading research institutions – with experts from Princeton University, Rockefeller University, the Weill Cornell Medicine and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research – an immunotherapy strategy to combat cancer.
“Good things happen when people believe in cooperation,” said Weill on Thursday morning in an exclusive interview about CNBCS “Squawk Box”.
The most recent donation from Weill marks the foundation, which gives more than 1 billion US dollars to non -profit organizations.
“With the best minds in the field, which is equipped with the most advanced research techniques, the Weill Cancer Hub East will try to increase immunotherapy and to improve patient care for people who fight cancer,” said Weill in an explanation.
The new partnership will concentrate on examining how nutrition and microbes that metabolize food that can influence immunotherapy and other cancer treatments. The Weill Family Foundation said that the hub would also investigate how GLP-1 agonists and other aspiring therapeutics could affect cancer treatment.
In contrast to other therapies that directly remove or attack cancer cells, the patient's immune system uses to combat or attack the disease from the inside. The projects of the hub will concentrate on the “reprogramming” of the tumor micro environment, the foundation said in a publication and will also offer clinical studies.
“How we can increase the effectiveness of immunotherapy for all cancer types and patients is one of the scientific questions that have to be answered the most,” said Dr. Robert Harrington, the Dean of the Weill Cornell Medicine.
Research from the new hub is intended to complement research and development from the National Institutes of Health, said Weill and cannot replace the work that the NIH does. However, Weill added that he believes that Nih's work could be a little limited.
“I think they are not the big risk carriers they used to be,” he said in “Squawk Box”. “I think it is the job of the private sector to be more of the risk carrier.”
The Weill Family Foundation previously founded another center entitled Weill Neurohub, the researcher of the University of California in San Francisco. The University of California, Berkeley; the University of Washington; And all institutes to work on the development of treatments for neurological and psychiatric diseases.
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