GE leads $100-M fund for breast cancer challenge

MANILA, Philippines - GE and four venture capital firms have pledged $100 million for a six-month contest to finance ideas for improving breast cancer detection.

This move is aimed at improving the diagnosis of breast cancer, the most common form of the disease in women, and find more precise therapies, GE said in a statement.

Breast cancer will also be the initial focus of a $1-billion GE investment over five years to develop products for the disease’s early detection and to treat tumors.

“In the case of breast cancer, there’s some meaningful therapies, it’s such a pervasive disease, we thought it was a good place to start,” GE chief executive officer Jeffrey Immelt said at a recent event in New York to launch the campaign.

The contest is modeled on a smartgrid drive under GE’s “ecomagination” initiative, which includes a $200-million fund that has put up financing for 22 small companies and entrepreneurs working on so-called renewable technologies.

The $1 billion is part of the $6 billion GE pledged to spend under its Healthymagination campaign started two years ago.

The contest will use both direct investments and grant access to the Fairfield, Connecticut-based company’s sales force and research and development resources, also awarding $100,000 for universities for research.

“We don’t think we invent it all here,” Immelt said. “We think there are great opportunities to partner with small companies, in health care in particular.”

Immelt has been building out the health-care business at GE, expanding partnerships and boosting research with an eye toward making cancer diagnosis more precise.

GE spent $580 million last year to buy Clarient Inc., a maker of diagnostic tests used to tailor treatments.

GE, the world’s biggest maker of medical-imaging equipment and health care information technology systems, will contribute half of the $100 million fund.

Venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Venrock Associates, Mohr Davidow Ventures and MPM Capital LP will provide the rest.

The program includes a three-year partnership with Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a non-profit group that raises money for breast cancer research.

Its objective is to give women easier and wider access to new technologies to fight the disease, GE said. Initial programs will be in Wyoming, Saudi Arabia and China.

GE Healthcare, based outside London in Chalfont St. Giles, contributed $16.9 billion of the parent company’s $150.2 billion in revenue last year.

John Dineen, GE Healthcare president and CEO, said the product line spans molecular imaging to inexpensive scans and an information database that connects them both.