Of all the cuts the Trump Administration has made, its attacks on medical research are some of the most baffling, threatening the ability for American scientists to keep developing new medicines to treat everything from cancer to Parkinson’s.
For billionaire Sean Parker, who told Forbes he’s been heavily involved in lobbying to boost federal spending on medical research, that means philanthropies and the private sector will have to step in to fill some of the gap.
“We’ve seen this incredible, historic, unprecedented retreat from public funding,” Parker, 45, told Forbes. “Which is really the engine that fuels the single most productive biotech innovation economy in the world.”
In this environment, he also sees a bigger role for the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI), a philanthropic organization he founded nearly a decade ago with a $250 million grant that funds cancer research. It also invests in biotech companies turning that research into drugs. Parker poured in another $125 million in 2024, and said he’s committed more funds towards the next round of grant funding, though he didn’t disclose the amount.
To date, PICI has spent over $300 million on nearly 500 academic projects that have resulted in the publication of over 4,000 papers and over 300 patents, largely focused on cancer immunotherapies — drugs that assist the body’s own immune system to fight cancers. Seventeen biotech companies have spun up based on this research, collectively raising over $4 billion in venture capital (which includes funds that PICI has invested). PICI has conducted six clinical trials to test cancer treatments, including one that improved survival in pancreatic cancer patients, and its portfolio companies have 50 in various stages.
“In a world where [public] funding is being reduced, we are likely to see the more ambitious, interesting projects going unfunded because a simple, easy to understand project tends to be less risky,” he said. That’s where PICI can step in.
As part of its effort, PICI announced that it’s appointing former American Cancer Society CEO Karen Knudsen as its new chief executive in order to “take the organization to the next level” and scale up its operations, Parker said. Knudsen, a cancer researcher who has a PhD in molecular biology, previously founded the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center’s prostate cancer program and led its cancer care programs as enterprise director. During her three-year tenure leading the American Cancer Society, the organization more than doubled the research grants it awarded. As CEO of PICI, she will oversee the institute’s partnerships with multiple universities and cancer centers, including Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, UCLA and others, as well as PICI’s investments in biotech companies.
As federal research funding is cut back, “the level of risk tolerance shrinks,” Knudsen told Forbes. That leaves more ambitious projects in the lurch.
But PICI has a flexible model, which was part of the appeal for Knudsen. The organization is able to quickly react to changes impacting the research landscape. For example, if the organization determined that a technology is “absolutely critical and going to be the most game changing for cancer patients and it’s not moving forward in another way,” PICI will shift more resources towards it, she said.
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Among the startups PICI has backed so far are Arsenal Bio, which most recently raised a $325 million series C round that valued the company at $1.85 billion, according to Pitchbook. It is currently testing its cell therapies against kidney cancer and ovarian cancer on humans, and plans to begin trials for prostate cancer later this year. Another is Georgiamune, which has already begun clinical trials for a treatment targeting advanced metastatic cancers after it launched with a $75 million series A in August 2023.
The work with startups is particularly important right now, Parker said, because biotech investments are declining as venture investors deal “with a public equities market where there’s very little interest in biotech.” The investments that do happen are largely for companies that are already in later stages with products well along the development path.
While both Parker and Knudsen are adamant that their organization can’t replace public funding, they think they can move science forward by backing bolder projects as governments and markets become more risk-averse.
“These are precisely the intensive market conditions which we’re designed to weather or help others weather,” Parker said. “It gives me a lot of motivation to continue doing what we’re doing and double down on it.”
