XPRIZE, the incentivized prize competition for breakthrough science and technology, has announced three new prizes. Among them — ALS, avatars and Deloitte’s Cancer XPRIZE.
Deloitte is working in conjunction with the National Cancer Institute and Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative to bring some of the best and brightest minds together to rid the world of what is the No. 1 leading cause of death globally.
XPRIZE declared Deloitte’s XPRIZE competition ready to launch last week, but Deloitte’s Beth Meagher, who’s heading the Cancer XPRIZE challenge, tells TechCrunch it will be a couple of months before that happens.
In the meantime, Meagher’s team hopes to bring in hundreds of folks eager to tackle the disease using cutting-edge techniques.
“Our whole goal is to rapidly, accurately and affordably screen for early cancers where it will reduce human suffering,” Meagher told TechCrunch over the phone from her Washington, D.C. office.
Deloitte will be matching up teams of researchers, data scientists, biohackers and the like with those working in advocacy, regulations and other industry experts who can aid them with resources to speed up the process.
Similar to the Google Lunar XPRIZE, the winning team to come up with the best way to tackle cancer will earn millions in cash in a grand-prize giveaway. This time, it will be $20 million to the winners (as opposed to Google’s $30 million grand prize), but there will also be a few $500,000 microprizes along the way to incentivize those in the ring.
It’s still very early and Meagher and her team are looking forward to announcing who some of the players will be in the coming months, but she said she expects the whole thing to take about three years in total before getting to the grand-prize winner.