GE Healthcare has selected five winners in the first stage of its $100 million GE healthymagination Cancer Challenge awards program.
GE said it selected the winners based on their potential to help doctors find cancer earlier, make more accurate diagnoses, and choose the best possible treatment based on each patient's unique cancer. Winners will receive a $100,000 seed award and support from GE through mentorship and access to GE researchers and industry, with opportunity for expanded partnerships in the future.
The winners include:
- Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and Uganda Cancer Institute (UCI) in Kampala, Uganda, for a breast cancer screening program where women will receive education about breast cancer. Those with symptoms will be offered a clinical breast exam and breast ultrasound. Women with suspicious lumps will be referred to UCI for tissue sampling and treatment if malignancy is diagnosed.
- Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, for MyCancerGenome, a free online cancer medicine resource and decision-making tool for physicians, patients, caregivers and researchers.
- The University of Akron in Akron, OH, which is developing new materials for breast reconstruction to transform tissue expanders and implants into cancer-fighting and healing devices.
- Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, FL, which is working to understand genetic "modifier" genes and their role in predisposition to the spread of cancer to other parts of the body.
- Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, TN, which has demonstrated that gene expression analysis reveals at least six distinct disease subtypes for triple-negative breast cancer that will likely respond differently to chemotherapy, GE said. The institution is now designing clinical trials with targeted therapy for select subtypes.
