The meteoric rise and huge popularity of Napster fundamentally changed the way that music is consumed and almost singlehandedly paved the way for modern services like Spotify, Pandora, and Apple Music. Now, founder of Napster and early Facebook investor Sean Parker has set his sights on altering the world in an even bigger way: ending Type 1 Diabetes. Parker, who has donated to allergy research and other good causes in the past, hopes to completely end the autoimmune disease that affects so many people worldwide. The tech billionaire donated directly to a lab at UCSF in the hopes that a centralized place of research and experimentation will lead to a faster breakthrough. About his reasons behind making the gesture, Parker explained
“I had this kind of fascination and personal interest of the underlying mechanisms of autoimmunity, and spent the better part of the decade of reading everything I could get my hands on, which includes research.”
Sean Parker is somebody who made his money off of two of the biggest tech startup breakthroughs this millennium, so far be it for us to quibble with where he chooses to allocate his money. If Parker thinks that the doctors at UCSF are the closest to making a breakthrough, then there’s a good chance he is right on the money (pun intended). Maybe someday a cure for autoimmune diseases like diabetes will be available with a single download for anybody in need.
(Via Business Insider)
