A New Way to Fund the Cancer Fight

Dr. Mona Jhaveri, Founder and Director of Music Beats Cancer, started her career as a cancer researcher and moved into the biotech industry where she quickly realized that fundraising is extremely difficult, if not impossible over time. After receiving her doctoral degree in biochemistry, she went on to do postdoctoral training at the National Cancer Institute(NCI) where she made a discovery in the lab that could help treat ovarian cancer, one of the deadliest cancers for women worldwide. After accessing the patent rights to the technology from the NCI, she launched a biotech start-up company, Foligo Therapeutics Inc., as an effort to continue developing the technology. Over time, fundraising for Foligo became extremely difficult and the company, along with its technology for fighting ovarian cancer, succumbed to the ”Valley of Death” – A metaphorical place where great ideas go to die because they lack the critical funds to move forward. As a consequence, the Valley of Death impedes progress in reducing the enormous cancer burden the world is facing today, yet the public is unaware. This loss of Foligo, inspired Dr. Jhaveri to launch Music Beats Cancer as a way to support biotech entrepreneurs who are working on cancer-fighting technologies that are at risk of disappearing into the Valley of Death simply because they lack the needed funds.

Published at Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:00:00 +0000