Understanding life
Understanding Life is to be the program to end cancer as a deadly disease in our world. Together with a group of leading scientist from around the world, we want to devise a roadmap for the victory over cancer within the next 10 years. This may seem an impossible task, but we are determined to get results soon. In january 2011, a kickoff event will take place in Amsterdam.
Understanding Life represents knowledge and wisdom about life. When people understand life, they will soon understand the mutations of life. They will soon understand cancer. And of course when you understand cancer, you know better how to find and implement a suitable and timely treatment for getting it in control, and eventually to cure the patient.
Three ‘boys’, Eric van Veenendaal, Jan Gerrit Schuurman and Peter Kapitein started searching for life in order to find the cure for cancer. They now travel around the globe and visit top scientists and ask each of them the following 2 questions: ‘How can we accelarate the research for the origins of cancer?’ and ‘How can we get this knowledge from the laboratories to all the clinics and feed results back to the laboratory?’
Understanding Life! is organized along three lines.
- The line of a positive global event.
- The line of money
- The line of science.
In a lot of countries around the world events like Alpe d’HuZes and Ven2-4Cancer will be organized to inspire people and empower them to convert the sense of powerlessness caused by cancer, into strength. We also ask the finance and industry leaders to join and support us with their money, knowledge and experience and their determination. Together, we want to devise a roadmap for a renewed war against cancer. Together, we can make the impossible possible. We want to achieve this by motivating as many people as possible to constantly challenge and expand their boundaries.
If you are interested in reading about the searches of the three boys follow them on twitter or read their journals here.
Understanding Life! The Conference.
The result of these talks and advises will be a program called Understanding Life! The kick off conference for this program is to be held in Amsterdam on the 12th, 13th and 14th of January 2011. During that conference 75 of the worlds most famous scientists will join together to answer the question: ‘What do we need to eliminate cancer as a deadly disease within 10 years?’
Attendees of this conference will be among others James Watson, Nout Wellink, Bob Weinberg, Els Borst, Robbert Dijkgraaf , Daniel Louvard, Anton Berns, Bruce Ponder, Gerard Kleisterlee, Arnold Levine, Alexander Rinnooy Kan and Laura van ‘t Veer.
The Conference is organized by the Royal Academy of Arts and Science and the Central Bank of the Netherlands. If you want to read the invitation, click here.
Understanding Life! The Program.
The program as a whole consists of four sub programs:
- Systems biology of cancer research. This is the search for life and is all about diagnoses.
- New clinical practices. The diagnose leads to the best treatments for patients.
- Bio bank. Everything known and becoming known is registered and disseminated.
- Public relations. Tell about the results to the professionals but more important to the patients.
The problem consists of a set of problems, represented by one or several forms of cancer. A problem drives a project. Selecting the right kind of problem is not at all trivial. But once the right kind of problem has been selected, it will drive a resourcing plan. Labs will be needed, machinery for the analysis of biomaterial will be required, more than one form of expertise is needed, et cetera. While a problem is owned by one research group, skill, knowledge and material resources may be present in one of the other projects. Hence the importance of pooling (and sharing) experiences, successes and failures. The projects are connected. What will connect problems and projects is not yet clear.
While each problem is owned by a separate centre, the people working on each problem can in principle work at any of the connected centres. Crucial is the existence of patient infrastructures: the infrastructure that connects researchers and clinicians with relevant patient data, contained in a bio bank.
Projects are characterized by being:
- International cancer research projects.
- Young, bright, enthusiastic and qualified personnel.
- Respected Team Lead (queen bee).
- Willingness and eagerness to share and use each other’s data.
- Good diversity of team members.
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