Sean Parker found huge success at an incredibly young age. 

At 19 he cofounded Napster, a file-sharing service that would change how the world consumes music. 

By 24, he was the founding president of Facebook, a startup that was then tiny but would go on to become the biggest social network in the world. 

The 35-year-old, whose net worth is estimated to be about $3 billion, hasn't slowed a bit. He recently launched Brigade, a social platform meant to encourage civic engagement, and donated $600 million to his own foundation.

He's found a bit of controversy along the way, developing a reputation for being a big partyer and an even bigger spender. 

Parker cofounded file-sharing service Napster in 1999, when he was only 19 years old. Napster became one of the fastest-growing businesses of all time, as well as one of the most controversial. Parker and his cofounder, Shawn Fanning, are often credited with revolutionizing the music industry.

Source: Fortune

After several lawsuits from music associations eventually shut down Napster, Parker went on to found a social-networking site called Plaxo. He was ousted two years later.

Read more about Plaxo »

Parker joined the Facebook team in 2004, when it was just a fledgling college startup. As the social network's founding president, he would play a huge role in the site's early investments, design, and transition into a viable company.

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From cofounding Napster to becoming the founding president of Facebook at age 24, Sean Parker has had an incredible life. 

Produced by Eames Yates. Original reporting by Madeline Stone.

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A growing number of tech moguls are trying to solve their biggest problem yet: Aging. 

From reprogramming DNA to printing organs, some of Silicon Valley's most successful and wealthy leaders are investing in biomedical research and new technologies with hopes of discovering the secret to living longer. And their investments are beginning to move the needle, said Zoltan Istvan, futurist and transhumanist presidential candidate.  

"I think a lot of the most important work in longevity is coming from a handful of the billionaires," Istvan told Tech Insider. "There are approximately six or seven billionaires that are very interested in life extension and they are putting in $40, $50, $100 million out there every year or every few years into this stuff. It makes a big difference when you have these legendary figures saying 'Hey, we can do this.'”

Here's some of those billionaires investing in the anti-aging and longevity research and development. 

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Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, is known for his early investment in Facebook, but now he is betting big on biotech. Thiel said that he believes anti-aging medicine is “structurally unexplored,” according to a report from MIT Technology Review.

“The way people deal with aging is a combination of acceptance and denial,” he told Technology Review in March. “They accept there is nothing they can do about it, and deny it’s going to happen to them.”

Thiel takes hormone growth daily and is planning to participate in cryonic freezing after his death, according to the Technology Review report.

The 47 year old isn’t accepting or denying it, though. He has invested heavily to try to fight death for the last several years. Back in 2006, he pledged $3.5 million to the Methuselah Foundation, which is a non-profit group working on life extension by advancing tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

Thiel has also heavily invested in biotech companies. Most of his investments in the space are made via his Thiel Foundation. But at least five investments — including the DNA laser printing company Cambrian Genomics and cancer drug developer Stem CentRx  — via his venture capital firm Founder Fund. He has also invested $17 million in Counsyl since 2011, which is a company that offers DNA screening.

Larry Ellison

The founder of Oracle has said that he wishes to live forever and is an avid financial supporter into anti-aging research.

The Ellison Medical Foundation, which according to its website “supports basic biomedical research on aging relevant to understanding lifespan development processes and age-related diseases and disabilities,”has donated about $430 million in grants to medical researchers since 1997, about 80% of which has been focused on anti-aging developments.

“Death has never made any sense to me. How can a person be there and then just vanish, just not be there?” Ellison told his biographer Mike Wilson in 2003.

Larry Page

The co-founder of Google and CEO of Alphabet, also founded Calico in 2013. Calico, which is short for California Life Company, focuses on anti-aging research. In 2014, the company announced it had an investment of $750 million from Google.

Since its launch, Calico has also entered into several partnerships with different organizations to help it cure aging.

Most recently, Calico announced in April it was teaming up with the Buck Institute for for Research on Aging, which is one of the largest independent anti-aging research organizations. In 2013, the group garnered some attention for using genetic mutations to increase the lifespan of earthworms to the human equivalent of 400 to 500 years.

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Over the last decade, Silicon Valley has become an extraordinary force in politics, but they've bewildered the DC establishment with their bizarre loyalties. Tech titans are the arch nemesis of labor unions on a series of fronts, from high-skilled immigration and the taxi industry to free trade and their aggressive funding of union-less public charter schools.

And, yet, tech CEOs are arguably the Democrats' biggest cheerleaders: in the 2012 presidential election, 83% of employee donations from top tech firms went to Obama. "Most of Silicon Valley, most of the executives, tend to be Democrats," PayPal co-Founder, Peter Thiel, admitted to me.

To understand whether this unconventional behavior was just convenient political maneuvering or something more ideologically consistent, I conducted the first representative political psychology study of the tech industry, with the help of an exhaustive database of Silicon Valley founders called Crunchbase (which was created by TechCrunch, where I was the lead policy reporter for 2 years). 

The results suggest that Internet startup founders represent an entirely distinct, libertarian-like ideology within the Democratic party (see methods section for survey details). Tech startup founders see the government as an investor in citizens, rather than as a protector from capitalism.

Founders share all the stereotypical fervor for the free market as libertarians, but they also believe the government has a duty to actively help citizens solve global problems.

Whereas American politics has traditionally assumed that free market fandom was in an exclusive relationship with libertarian individualism, tech founders are actually quite collectivist. They believe the government should embrace the unforgiving meritocracy of capitalism by operating like a high-tech company (which is how union-less Silicon Valley-funded charter schools often operate). 

They also believe the government should intervene in personal decisions, encouraging citizens to be more educated, healthier, and civic.

Libertarian icon Rand Paul learned about the Valley's unabashed rejection of individualism during a campaign stump speech in San Francisco when he asked the crowd, "Who's a part of the leave-me-alone-coalition?" Only three people clapped. It was awkward.

I found that the philosophy of Silicon Valley is radical idealism. Founders describe themselves as optimists, first and foremost.

“What makes Silicon Valley special? Eternal optimism of the innovative mind”, wrote tech blogger, Om Malik. “I’m maybe the most optimistic person I know. I mean, I’m incredibly optimistic. I’m optimistic arguably to a fault, especially in terms of new ideas," said notable investor, Marc Andreessen.

This Idealism is not rhetorical fluff; it's founded on two deep-seated assumptions about the world: change is inherently progressive and there are no conflicts between major groups in society.

"I tend to believe that most Silicon Valley people are very much long-term optimists….Could we have a bad 20 years? Absolutely. But, If you’re working towards progress, your future will be better than your present," Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman explained to me.

But it's not just about the future. This optimism also extends to present-day society.

While Democrats traditionally believe in a conflict between corporations and citizens, and libertarians fear a battle between the government and citizens, founders don't recognize any conflicts between any major group in society.

Indeed, when Elon Musk explained why he was giving away his Tesla patents, he noted:

If we’re all in a ship together and the ship has some holes in it, and we’re sort of bailing water out of it, and we have a great design for a bucket, then even if we’re bailing out way better than everyone else, we should probably still share the bucket design.

This cooperative view of humanity has fascinating implications for foreign policy as well: founders are not big supporters of sovereignty. They share libertarians' love of free trade, but it's generally because they're fans of any binding alliances that require cooperation between all nations.

In quite direct terms, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales tweeted, "I believe in the elimination of borders and free commerce as a route to peace. Barriers necessarily imply violence."

At their absolute philosophical core, Silicon Valley's elite believe that information is a panacea. That is, nearly every problem can be solved through conversation, education, or innovation.

To measure faith in information, I asked two questions, "Are there any problems a great education system alone can't solve?", and "how often can military enemies solve their dispute through dialogue alone?"

With near unanimity, founders believe that education can solve all or most problems (from violence to political partisanship) and soundly reject the notion that military enemies can't talk out their differences.

To be sure, while founders' ideology is novel in American politics, it does have a few analogues. In modern politics, it's close to what Political Scientists refer to as "communitarianism," the belief that communities are often better at solving social ills than government agencies.

This jibes with the sharing economy's obsession with replacing public transit with Uber-like carpooling or easing the housing crisis through Airbnb rentals. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt refers to this as the "religion" of the tech industry.

Historically, these beliefs are more akin to the European Renaissance "Enlightenment Era," where a faith in information was actually a recognizable ideology. After the French Revolution, the victors smashed churches and erected monuments to Reason (capital "R").

For centuries, extreme optimism in the wisdom of the crowds has lied dormant. But, it appears that the knowledge economy is giving this old idealism new life. It is quite literally the basis of many billion-dollar industries.

As Facebook founding President Sean Parker explained to me, "It’s the hacker ethic that a lot of problems in the world are information inefficiencies."

Future chapters in this series will explore why Silicon Valley has chosen the Democratic party as a vessel to attain their goals and how the profitability of the knowledge economy is making this new ideology quite powerful. 

Regardless of how powerful Silicon Valley actually becomes, innovation, itself, is becoming a distinct ideological category within American politics. It's not just about tech issues like immigration and broadband access, but how all of America's institutions can be reshaped in Silicon Valley's image. 

*For a more detailed Q&A about the survey, click here and for a list of chapters in the entire series, click here. And, follow the Ferenstein Wire newsletter for more stories.

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Napster cofounder and early Facebook investor Sean Parker has dealt with a deathly allergy to nuts, including a few close calls. 

But having already donated money to study allergies, Parker is turning his attention to an autoimmune disorder that's both more visible and more severe: Type 1 diabetes. 

Diabetes is a condition where there's too much glucose in the blood. Typically, the pancreas produces insulin, a hormone, to balance the glucose and help it get from the food you eat into your cells. If the pancreas doesn't create enough insulin or it doesn't work, blood sugar levels become too high or too low — a dangerous fluctuation that can lead to death.​

A leading immunologist at UCSF, Dr. Jeff Bluestone, has been working on a way to eliminate the autoimmune disorder by genetically modifying cells, like in the way cell therapy is changing the way people treat cancer. To fund Bluestone's work, Parker is announcing today a $10 million gift to create a diabetes research lab in his name at UC San Francisco.

"Just 10 years ago this all seemed maybe theoretically possible, but it seemed like science fiction. But now it’s happening in the clinic regularly," Parker said. "We’re at the cusp of a revolution in many different fields largely due to this combination of genetics and the understanding of the immune system and widespread use of cell therapy."

Parker has been studying autoimmune disorders because of his own conditions, he said Monday on a conference call with reporters.

The tech mogul who made billions off Facebook is deathly allergic to nuts and donated $24 million to Stanford last winter to fund the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy Research. 

"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," Parker said, going on to cite the work of Bluestone.

The $10 million gift is aimed at helping Bluestone work on genetically modifying cells to eliminate Type 1 diabetes. 

"The focus of this gift is autoimmunity, but very specifically a strategic targeted plan for eliminating — you’re hesitant to use the cure word — but hoping to ultimately cure Type 1 diabetes," Parker said.

It isn't a "typical philanthropic gift" Parker said because of both its size and scale. Rather than throwing money at a large foundation, Parker focused on empowering the work of Bluestone and his lab. It's all still an experiment, but Parker said he could continue funding the project if it sees success in its efficacy tests. 

In June, Parker gave $600 million to establish the Parker Foundation, which is where this pledge come from. Parker had previously donated $4.5 million to UCSF for malaria research. His foundation doesn't only focus on medicine, either. He's used his foundation to invest in Code for America while Parker himself leads political groups like Fwd.US and Causes. Forbes values Parker's net worth at $2.5 billion.

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A newly formed committee that aims to legalize recreational marijuana use in California has raised $1.25 million to get started.

Among the list of donors is Silicon Valley venture capitalist and early Facebook exec Sean Parker. He gave $500,000 to the fund, via his charitable Sean N. Parker Foundation.

The group has proposed legalizing the recreational use of marijuana in California, and taxing retail sales of it 15%.

The coalition first came to light in November, and Parker was involved from the get go, promising back then that he would back it with money, perhaps millions of dollars, the LA Times reports.  His official statement sent to multiple news outlets at the time explained:

It's very encouraging to see a vibrant community of activists … coming together around a sensible reform-based measure that protects children, gives law enforcement additional resources and establishes a strong regulatory framework for responsible adult use of marijuana — one that will yield economic benefits for all Californians.

Parker helped found Napster and is a billionaire thanks to his early involvement in Facebook, and he's also known for his fabulous and outrageous parties. He isn't the only big name behind the initiative. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who chaired California’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Policy, also endorsed the measure, reports the Chronicle. 

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First he disrupted the music business with Napster, then he helped Mark Zuckerberg craft Facebook, changing the way we live our lives.

Now, Sean Parker wants to make movies in theaters more easily available for home viewing.

A company called The Screening Room, founded by Parker and Prem Akkaraju (who is also CEO), is making the rounds at Hollywood studios pitching $50 rental fees for movies still in theaters. The service would use the company's secure antipiracy set-top boxes, according to Variety, which broke the story Wednesday evening.

The Screening Room would reportedly charge $150 for the set-top box and $50 a rental (available for 48 hours).

As DVD sales continue to plummet, studios will listen to any ideas that can bring them revenue. According to Variety, The Screening Room has found serious interest from Universal, Fox, and Sony. Disney, according to the story, has no interest.

And The Screening Room is trying to extend an olive branch to exhibitors by offering customers two tickets to see the movie they buy in theaters, which would soften the blow of violating the standard 90-day theatrical window for movies before they move to home-video and streaming platforms.

The Screening Room is also proposing giving theater chains a slice of the revenue, as much as $20 of the fee. Distributors who participate would take 20% of the $50 rental fee, and Screening Room would take 10% of the fee, according to Variety.

The basic idea isn't a new one in Hollywood. Back in 2011, the Ben Stiller comedy "Tower Heist" was offered as an on-demand option to 500,000 Comcast customers at a price of $59.99 for rental. The "test," as the film's studio, Universal, called it, was a bust. Most customers didn't go for it.

Though The Screening Room has come up with a plan that intrigues both distributors and exhibitors, it is unknown whether the public will dish out $50 to see the next Marvel or "Star Wars" movie at home instead of going to the theater for a significantly lower price.

Here are the results to our Twitter poll where we asked if you'd pay $50 to rent a movie that's still in theaters:

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Theater owners have started to weigh in on Sean Parker's bold bid to make new films available to rent in the home for $50 via an encrypted $150 set-top box on the same day they hit theaters — and not all the theater chains are happy about it.

"I think this is not a good idea, and I sincerely doubt the studios will go for it at that price point. It feels like a half-baked plan to me," said Tim League, founder and CEO of Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.

Parker — the founder of Napster who later played a key role in Facebook's rise — and music executive Prem Akkaraju are pitching the proposal for their new company, The Screening Room, and will need significant support from theater owners if it is to work. Otherwise, Hollywood studios will be reluctant to license their titles in fear that exhibitors could retaliate by either refusing to carry the movies in question or by striking tough terms to agree to book them.

The Screening Room hopes to entice exhibitors by sharing revenue, and giving them $20 for every $50 spent by a consumer renting a title for a 48-hour window. Parker and Akkaraju's push comes at a time when serious discussions are going on between studios and theater owners about how to shorten windows without jeopardizing the box office; however, a $50 day-and-date rental service may not be the solution. (In the past, League has not been adverse to playing day-and date releases.)

Major theater circuits Cinemark and Regal Entertainment aren't expected to partner with The Screening Room, according to sources. While Cinemark wouldn't reveal its position, CEO Mark Zoradi issued a statement raising his concerns.

"The exhibition window has been the most stable window long-term and the theatrical success of a film drives the value proposition for the studios’ downstream ancillary markets," he said. "Cinemark believes that any day-and-date propositions must be critically evaluated to avoid the devaluation of the exhibition window and all subsequent revenue streams of our content providers."

“Cinemark diligently evaluates and considers all business proposals. We have great relationships and an open dialogue with our studio partners and work directly with them individually regarding film content, windows, and decisions that may impact the long-term health of our industry," said Zoradi, a longtime studio executive who recently took the job at Cinemark.

Cinemark is the third-largest chain in the U.S. behind Regal and AMC Entertainment.

AMC, on the other hand, has signed a letter of intent with Parker's company, according to several sources who have been briefed on the matter. However, any formal deal is incumbent on certain conditions being met. AMC, owned by Chinese giant Dalian Wanda Group, will pass Regal to become the largest theater circuit in North America once it completes its recently announced acquisition of Carmike Cinemas later this year.

To date, both Cinemark and Regal have declined to make a similar commitment.

The Screening Room, represented by attorney Skip Brittenham, has attracted a powerful board of advisors that includes J.J. Abrams, Steven Spielberg, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Peter Jackson, who in 2011 was among 23 directors and producers who opposed a plan to make movies available on premium VOD 60 days after their release. 
But in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, Jackson explained his support for the new proposal, saying, "I had concerns about 'DirecTV' in 2011, because it was a concept that I believe would have led to the cannibalization of theatrical revenues, to the ultimate detriment of the movie business. Screening Room, however, is very carefully designed to capture an audience that does not currently go to the cinema."

He continued, "This is a critical point of difference with the DirecTV approach — and along with Screening Room's robust anti-piracy strategy, is exactly why Screening Room has my support. Screening Room will expand the audience for a movie — not shift it from cinema to living room. It does not play off studio against theater owner. Instead it respects both, and is structured to support the long-term health of both exhibitors and distributors — resulting in greater sustainability for the wider film industry itself."

Former Sony Pictures vice chairman Jeff Blake is consulting with the venture and, along with Akkaraju, has been meeting with the major studios in recent weeks and months, including Fox, Universal, Sony and Paramount. Disney won't participate in the venture, although the others have yet to decide on the proposal.

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Billionaire Sean Parker made his name by forever disrupting the music industry with Napster. Now he's aiming for the movie business. He's currently shopping his latest venture: The Screening Room, and he already has the support of many titans of the movie business such as Steven Spielberg and JJ Abrams.

The Screening Room would allow first-run movies playing in theaters to be streamed to a set-top box in your home. Each movie rental would cost $50. While the idea is already getting some pushback from some theater owners and studios, it's easy to see the product's potential upside.

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Sean Parker and Prem Akkaraju's bold bid to collapse theatrical windows and make new movies available in the home for $50 on the same day they hit theaters has set off a firestorm, sparking a fierce guessing game as to whether they can actually convince a majority of Hollywood studios to license their content.

So far, Parker, the co-founder of Napster, and Akkaraju, a music executive, haven't spoken publicly about their new venture, The Screening Room. Rather, they've relied on a raft of high-profile filmmakers who are shareholders, including Peter Jackson and J.J. Abrams, to explain why the service isn't a threat to theaters.

According to Jackson, the "SR" model would only target consumers who don't go to the movies, while Abrams says the Screening Room would be "beneficial" to theater owners because they would share in the revenue.

On Tuesday, the National Association of Theater Owners dismissed the idea, saying any decision to shorten windows should be made by exhibitors and Hollywood studios, not a "third party." NATO also politely told filmmakers advising on the matter to let theater operators determine what's in their best interest.

Here are five obstacles facing the Screening Room.

Price Point

"I think $50 is too low and I can see a lot of cannibalization, especially for family movies. It could be a lot cheaper for a family of four to stay home. Kids could have sleepovers, and 10 girls could watch Frozen 2. And think of colleges, where students could get together and watch a movie on a big-screen television," says analyst Eric Handler of MKM Partners. "I think it would have a significant impact on the industry."

You Can't Put the Genie Back in the Bottle


Offering movies day-and-date in the home could forever change customer behavior and expectations. "The cost of failure here is pretty great," says one executive who couldn't speak publicly after signing a non-disclosure agreement with the Screening Room. "And if such a service indeed impacts theatrical or home entertainment revenue, you can't take it back. The genie is out of the bottle."

Adds Handler: "People are often willing to watch a movie twice in two different settings, first in a theater and then on VOD or DVD. If you have a home-viewing system and you watch it day-and-date, are you going to pay for it again? I don't think so."

There's also concern that customers would soon want lower pricing.

Not Enough Theater Support


So far, AMC Entertainment is the only major theater circuit singing a letter of intent to do business with the Screening Room, while Regal Entertainment and Cinemark, the country's two largest chains after AMC, are a no. And the Art House Convergence, which represents 600 smaller specialty and independent cinema houses, says the Screening Room is a bad idea.

THR has learned that under Screening Room's plan, customers paying for a $150 encrypted set-top box would designate their "local theater." When they rent a movie for $50, a percentage would go to the designated theater. Also, the Screening Room would give a customer two free tickets to that theater in the aim to boost concession sales.

For the Screening Room to negotiating with Hollywood studios, exhibitor support is key since studios may not want to risk theater owners refusing to carry their films, or striking tougher terms. Disney has already made it clear it has no interest in the Screening Room; studios mulling the idea include Paramount and Universal.

Filmmakers Are Divided


Parker and Akkaraju were smart to line up top filmmakers to serve on their advisory board, but now filmmakers of equal prominence, including James Cameron and Christopher Nolan, are objecting to the service. And it's possible some of those who say they support the Screening Room could retreat in the face of the outcry from theater owners.

Piracy


Studios and theater owners have been assured that the $150 set-top box protects against piracy, but many are still concerned. "No matter what software has been included, what is there to stop someone from using their iPhones to record what they are watching? Bringing movies into the home day-and-date gives people the opportunity to find whatever way they can to share it illegally," said James Cameron's producing partner, Jon Landau.

Insiders say the Screening Room would use watermark technology to identify anyone who tried to record the movie with a camcorder of other device, such as an iPhone.

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Since the announcement that Sean Parker and music executive Prem Akkaraju are working on a company called Screening Room that plans to let consumers stream movies still showing in theaters from home for a $50 rental fee, filmmakers have been taking sides.

Though the company has big-name shareholders like directors Peter Jackson, J.J. Abrams, Ron Howard, Steven Spielberg, and Martin Scorsese, some major directors are opposed to it, namely James Cameron and Christopher Nolan.

Most of the debate has been focused on the financial pros and cons for theaters if such a bold endeavor were to become a reality. But director Jeff Nichols, whose first studio movie, "Midnight Special," opens in theaters on Friday, is opposed to the idea for another reason.

"The thing that nobody is talking about that I want them to is how terrible flat-screen TVs make movies look," Nichols told Business Insider.

Every TV has its own specific settings, meaning images look different on different TVs. Nichols says that when you buy an expensive television, the demo settings for it are set in a way that makes sporting events look amazing, but movies look flat.

"It looks like a friggin' Spanish soap opera," Nichols said. "I hate it."

The director's latest film, starring Michael Shannon as a father who tries to protect his son with special powers from authorities, is filled with dazzling cinematography and special effects. He believes the work he put into making it look its best would be ruined if audiences were given an option not to see it in theaters at all.

"I spend thousands of dollars a day making sure my movies look a very specific way," he said. "So before I could ever get on board with a home-viewing system that allowed the complete takeaway of the theatrical component, I would want to make sure that people in their houses would see a correct representation of the movie I make."

The current model for Screening Room would allow consumers the option to buy a $150 antipiracy set-top box to permit them 48-hour rentals of movies that are still showing in theaters. A portion of the $50 fee would go to exhibitors, and customers would receive two tickets to their local multiplex for the movie they rented.

SEE ALSO: 5 reasons Sean Parker's $50 home movie streaming service could be a failure

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J.J. Abrams has a message for theater owners: Don't be fearful.

Abrams reaffirmed his support Monday night of Sean Parker's controversial Screening Room moments before appearing at the annual convention of exhibitors in Las Vegas to receive CinemaCon's Showman of The Year award during the opening-night ceremonies and plug Paramount's "Star Trek Beyond," which he's producing.

And when taking the stage, Abrams told the crowd: “There’s nothing better than going to the movies and there never will be. I’m open to all good ideas. In this age of piracy we must be thoughtful partners." He added, "we must do that without fear.”

The proposal to collapse theatrical windows is already becoming a hot topic this week at CinemaCon. Representatives of the plan to make new movies available at home for $50 are unofficially at the convention taking meetings in hopes of convincing wary cinema operators why the plan won't jeopardize their business.

Abrams insisted he likes the Screening Room precisely because it proposes sharing revenue with exhibitors at a time when many consumers, including younger demos, are seeking their entertainment elsewhere.

"I love nothing more than going to the movies. That's the way it has to be. I also know I'm the father of three kids and I haven't been at a theater on opening night [with them] in probably 12 years," Abrams told The Hollywood Reporter before taking part in Paramount's presentation. (Two of his children are teenagers; the third is younger.)

"That's not to say that this is why it [the Screening Room] speaks to me. But I see what's happening, whether people like it or not, and the way things are evolving with piracy and digital technology. And in this moment, I think it's important to be open to all avenues that allow everyone, including and especially exhibitors, to be at the table and a part of that discussion. That's, to me, the thing that makes Screening Room exciting," he continued.

So far, though, most theater owners are a long way from embracing the proposal.

Abrams declined to say whether he was a shareholder in the Screening Room. He's among numerous top filmmakers and producers, including Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, who are backing Parker and music executive Prem Akkaraju's latest venture.

To be able to rent a movie for $50 on the same day that it hits theaters, a consumer would first pay $150 for an encrypted set-top box.

Jackson said he supports the Screening Room because it would capture those who don't go to the cinema anymore. Abrams agreed with that.

"We have to be mindful and work together. I like the Screening Room because it allows everyone to be at the table to figure out ways to evolve," he said. "The important thing to do is listen to exhibitors and listen to the Screening Room people and that's what I'm doing right now.

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(Reuters) - A $250 million grant from Silicon Valley billionaire Sean Parker, announced on Wednesday, aims to speed development of more effective cancer treatments by fostering collaboration among leading researchers in the field.

The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy will include over 40 laboratories and more than 300 researchers from six key cancer centers: New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering, Stanford Medicine, the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, San Francisco, Houston's University of Texas MD Anderson and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

"Any breakthrough made at one center is immediately available to another center without any kind of IP (intellectual property) entanglements or bureaucracy," Parker, the co-founder of music-sharing website Napster and the first president of Facebook, told Reuters in an interview.

The institute will focus on the emerging field of cancer immunotherapy, which harnesses the body's immune system to fight cancer cells.

Recently approved drugs such as Yervoy and Opdivo from Bristol Myers Squibb Co and Merck & Co Inc's Keytruda have helped some patients sustain remission. But those first-generation therapies do not work for everyone, and scientists are trying to understand how to make them more effective.

"Very little progress has been made over the last several decades," Parker said, referring to cancer drug research. "Average life expectancy has only increased three to six months with some of these drugs that cost billions to develop."

 Three key research areas

The institute has identified three key areas of research - modifying a patient's own immune system T-cells to target a tumor; studying ways to boost patient response to current immunotherapy drugs; and research to identify other novel targets to attack a tumor.

Parker said the current system of cancer drug development discouraged the kinds of risk-taking that could lead to a major breakthrough.

The new institute "is paradigm shifting," said Dr. Jedd Wolchok, chief of the melanoma and immunotherapeutics unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

He said it would alleviate the need for scientists to secure grants, which he said took up at least 30 percent of his time, foster collaboration among accomplished scientists and provide access to the newest information processing and data technology.

"I have no doubt this will allow us to make progress, and to make it much more quickly," Wolchok said.

The Parker Institute aims to ensure members can easily share research discoveries and tools, as well as jointly conduct clinical trials with standardized data collection and operations.

Parker said the aim was to maximize the return on investment by holding off on licensing deals until later in the research process, or even after a drug has been approved by regulators. Any profits would be funneled back into the institute.

Patented discoveries made by the cancer center researchers will be shared 50-50 with the institute. A committee with members from each cancer center as well as representatives of the Parker Institute will review potential licensing deals. Jeff Bluestone, a professor at UCSF and an early researcher of immunotherapy, was appointed president of the Parker Institute.

Parker credited his late friend Laura Ziskin, a Hollywood producer known for such films as "Pretty Woman" and founder of Stand Up To Cancer, with raising his awareness of the need to overhaul cancer research. She died of the disease in 2011.

"Losing Laura transformed me," he said.

(Reporting by Deena Beasley in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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Sean Parker — the founder of Napster and former president of Facebook— is putting down a $250 million grant to fight cancer.

Reuters reports that the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy will have 40 laboratories and over 300 researchers banded together. 

The focus will be on "cancer immunotherapy," a technique of using the body to fight cancer. 

"Any breakthrough made at one center is immediately available to another center without any kind of IP (intellectual property) entanglements or bureaucracy," Parker told Reuters.

The emphasis on information sharing echoes with Parker's personal history as the founder of Napster, the file-sharing Web 1.0 startup that some people (like Metallica) say broke the music industry.  

It also shows what Parker has taken to calling "hacker philanthropy," a Silicon Valley-style of giving that stands in contrast to old money. 

In a manifesto written for the Wall Street Journal, Parker described hacker values as antiestablishment, seeking vulnerabilitties in the system, a belief in transparency, and a belief that you can use data to find elegant solutions to complex problems. 

"By identifying weaknesses in long-established systems, [hackers] have successfully disrupted countless industries, from retail and music to transportation and publishing," he wrote.

Now that ethos is being directed at cancer. 

Others hacks at the Insitute include sharing research tools between organizations and conducting clinical trials together with standardized data. One top immunologist told Reuters that the Institute takes away the necessity of writing grants, which eats up 30% of his time. 

Member insitutions include Stanford Medicine, the University of Pennsylvania, and Memorial Sloan Kettering. 

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Another big name has joined the research effort for a new kind of cancer treatment called immunotherapy, which uses the immune system to fight cancer cells.  

Sean Parker, the internet billionaire who co-founded Napster and is a former Facebook president, gave $250 million on Wednesday to launch the Parker Institute that will help with the research and development of cancer immunotherapy treatments. 

Unlike chemotherapy, which involves administering powerful drugs that kill both cancerous and healthy cells (most healthy cells can repair themselves), immunotherapies harness the power of the immune system to help it identify and knock out just the cancerous cells.

For example, using something called a PD-1 inhibitor — which goes after a type of protein called PD-1 that stops the immune system from fighting cancerous cells — immunotherapy effectively helps the immune system take its foot off the brakes. Others, like cancer vaccines, activate the immune system in other ways, pushing it to work harder against cancer cells.

Cancer in the crosshairs

In the past few months, many big names have started piling on initiatives with a particular focus in accelerating research in cancer immunotherapy.

For example, Vice President Joe Biden and the Obama administration have asked for a $1 billion initiative for a "cancer moonshot" which will in part focus on immunotherapy. Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and others pledged $125 million to create a new immuno-oncology focused cancer institute at Johns Hopkins. And Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the CEO of NantWorks, set up a Cancer MoonShot2020 coalition that aims to bring together all the people developing immunotherapies to bridge research gaps. Pharmaceutical companies also have many types of these treatments already in clinical trials, and investors expect many of them will generate billions in sales in the next couple of years.

Immunotherapy for cancer isn't particularly new, so why all the recent attention and investments?

Essentially, it comes down to the fact that we're finally getting to see the results. 

The Cancer Research Institute (CRI), which has been exploring cancer immunotherapy since the 1950s, is one of the many partners that will be working with the Parker Institute.

"It’s when you see the successes and durable responses,"Cancer Research Institute CEO Jill O’Donnell-Tormey told Business Insider. One clear example of this is former president Jimmy Carter, who has been cancer-free since December 2015 after having his melanoma treated in part with an immunotherapy called Keytruda.

While the results are promising, they still aren't perfect. Some recently approved drugs, take Keytruda, for example, only work about 30% of the time. That's still better than the average response rate of chemotherapy treatments on their own in cases of metastatic melanoma. Still, when they do work, these treatments appear able to ward off cancer longer than other other existing treatments like chemotherapy.

What's within reach?

CRI CEO O’Donnell-Tormey said that right now, cancer immunotherapy researchers need to find specific antigens, or toxins that illicit a response by the immune system, to target. This will help ensure the immunotherapy works in every single person. And although immunotherapy has come along way in the past few years, it's still far from having cracked the code.

"It requires a lot of money, and there are no guarantees," said O’Donnell-Tormey. "Many times we’re funding only 10% of the research grants that come in."

Plus, it's hard to predict what will work and when it will work, so saying a certain amount of money will surely lead to a solution doesn't exactly cut it.  "We can’t say what the actual amount is that you really need to do it."

But in the meantime, having the momentum certainly doesn't hurt.

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Tech entrepreneur Sean Parker is just the latest big name to put up big money to fight cancer.

Parker, who helped found Facebook and Napster, plans to spend $250 million to build teams of researchers who aim to harness the immune system to attack cancer.

That’s on top of the $100 million for cancer immunotherapy research put up by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and clothing magnate Sidney Kimmel. Biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong has also assembled a coalition of rival drug companies to focus on immunotherapy. And the White House is proposing spending $755 million on a cancer “moonshot” led by Vice President Joe Biden.

So, will all that effort amount to anything? Here are five questions to keep in mind:

Will the money make much difference?

If money could cure cancer, we’d be home free.

Still, extra funding is always welcome. Even eminent cancer researchers spend large fractions of their time applying for grants: Dr. Jedd Wolchok of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, one of six centers that will receive support from Parker, told Reuters it takes 30 percent of his time. If he could spend more hours thinking about curing cancer and less looking for money, presumably he’d make faster progress.

On the other hand, the National Cancer Institute will spend $5.2 billion on research this year, so even when you add all the private funding together, it still represents a bump of less than 10 percent. Each of the six research centers participating in the Parker initiative will get an initial infusion of $10 million to $15 million — not peanuts, but not necessarily a game changer, either.

But aren’t these new initiatives trying a new approach?

Maybe.

They say they’re supporting a new model of cancer research and they use a lot of MBA buzzwords to make that point: They talk about smashing silos, crunching data, and emphasizing translational research that moves discoveries from the lab bench to patients, not just curing a bunch of lab mice. Above all, they emphasize the power of collaboration.

Some battle-scarred veterans of the country’s previous wars on cancer are holding their applause.

“It is hardly obvious that infusing money into these labs in order to speed up their level of interaction and collaboration will markedly accelerate the pace of discovery, innovation, and the development of new forms of cancer immunotherapy,” said cancer biologist Robert Weinberg of the Whitehead Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has been in the research trenches for some 40 years.

Cancer biologists like those receiving funding from Parker’s foundation “already communicate and collaborate — and hardly need funds to incentivize research collaborations,” Weinberg said. “Self-respecting scientists [collaborate] all the time when collaborations offer actual synergies.”

Is too much money chasing too little talent — or too few ideas?

This has happened before, such as when the federal government decided to make a big push for solar energy.

Immunotherapy, cancer biology’s flavor of the month, is a legitimately promising approach, having spawned drugs that are already in use, as well as many medications and therapeutic vaccines moving through the R&D pipeline.

And there are clear, specific questions to answer, such as why only a small fraction of cancer patients respond to existing immunotherapy drugs.

That will be one focus of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy: researchers will compare responders and nonresponders to see if they can improve the rates of lasting responses and extend the use of these immunotherapies to more types of cancer.

But there are legitimate questions about whether there’s too much focus on immunotherapy to the exclusion of other good ideas that might be bubbling up, and whether the same researchers keep getting funding at the expense of young innovators who might have entirely different ideas. After all, virtually every game-changing cancer therapy has come from an iconoclast.

Do we need new financial models for bringing drugs to market?

The Parker Foundation will handle patents, royalties, and licensing of discoveries that emerge from the research it funds. That’s billed as a way to speed promising compounds and vaccines into clinical trials and commercial development.

But university tech transfer offices already try to do just that.

STAT has not found any cancer biologists who think those intellectual property issues — rather than a fundamental paucity of meaningful discoveries — is the holdup in launching new therapies.

Can a billionaire with a vision jump-start research?

Much of the new funding from private sources springs from a concern that federal agencies fund mostly cautious, incremental research, producing cool findings about basic cancer biology but not many drugs that make a meaningful difference to patients. We’ll see if a more top-down approach works better than encouraging bright young researchers to follow their scientific muse.

One concern: If mostly big, established names get the billionaires’ money, younger scientists might get discouraged. Weinberg’s best graduate student, for instance, just told him she is going to go to law school rather than continue in science, dismayed in part by the constant dialing for dollars required to land research grants.

“The best and brightest are fleeing in droves,” Weinberg said. “People like Biden and Sean Parker should have stepped back and looked at long-term investments as well, specifically the type that will ensure that cancer research careers once again become attractive to students early in their careers.”

Charles Piller contributed reporting.

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Peter Jackson doubled down on his backing of Sean Parker’s controversial Screening Room service — which plans to let consumers rent movies still in theaters from their homes for $50 — on Wednesday while at the launch party of Parker’s recently announced Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.

“It is something that I believe in and something that is going to happen. It’s inevitable,” Jackson told The Hollywood Reporter of Screening Room and its model. “What we are trying to do is not make it scary and make everyone a winner in such a way that there is no fear involved and everyone comes out of it with a positive result.”

Jackson said that, at the moment, he’s investing more time than money in Screening Room, “helping with security advice,” a reference to Screening Room’s anti-piracy technology.

The Oscar-winning director also admitted that news of Screening Room was leaked, and the company has been playing catch-up to explain itself.

“We weren’t ready to roll it out as we were still working on it,” he told THR. “When people actually get to see it and view the presentation and hear what the security measures are, they will understand it a bit more.”

Some have speculated that Screening Room will present informally at CinemaCon in Las Vegas this week (it is not part of the official schedule).

Sean Parker and co. would have to be very convincing if they do present there. At CinemaCon, several studio heads have spoken out against Screening Room, including Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara.

“We are not going to let a third party of middlemen come between us,” Tsujihara said to a crowd of theater owners. “There are new technologies that could help our business. We’ll explore them with you together. We know the status quo is not an option, but we will meet the challenges before us as we always have.”

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The buzz around Sean Parker’s startup Screening Room, in which customers pay $50 to stream movies still available in theaters, has died down of late, but that doesn’t mean things aren’t going on behind closed doors.

In a piece in Deadline celebrating the “disruptive” career of filmmaker and Oscar winner Peter Jackson — one of the backers behind Screening Room along with fellow directors Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, and Martin Scorsese — the director unveiled for the first time details about the streaming startup's security and what its backers hope to achieve for a movie industry that Jackson believes is “dying slowly.”

“We want to inject health into it, to give the cinemas money they can use to improve the experience, and to give the studios money to get more films made,” Jackson told Deadline.

A big problem with the movie industry currently is that while it’s hitting box office records for grosses (thanks to the expensive cost to go to the movies), fewer people are going to theaters. Jackson points out that there was a 10 percent drop in attendance from 2014 to 2015.

“Screening Room is designed to sell movie tickets to people that want to buy them but can’t,” said Jackson.

The filmmaker said what sold him on Screening Room was a non-target audience survey the company did asking those who took it if they’d pay $50 to see a film at home:

83% of that non-target audience said no. That’s what we want, for those people to continue seeing movies in cinemas. We asked the same question to our target audience; the people stuck at home, the 25-39 year olds. And 70% said yes they would spend $50. This is what persuaded me.

The article did not indicate how many people were surveyed.

The business model of Screening Room is not to shut out movie chains. According to previous reports, the company has proposed giving theater chains a slice of the revenue, as much as $20 of the fee. Distributors who participate would take 20% of the $50 rental fee, and Screening Room would take 10% of the fee. The $50 rental (you also have to pay $150 for a set-top box) also gets you two tickets to see the movie in theaters.

Jackson told Deadline that this can help the movie industry’s theatergoing problem.

“If we can get Screening Room into 20 million households, and they rent 12 movies a year, then the exhibitors and the studios will get over $8.5 billion dollars a year,” he told Deadline.

Jackson also went into some of the security Screening Room is developing, which will help with the industry’s constant combat against piracy:

Screening Room is only going to be sold as a membership from a Screening Room website, and there will be thorough security checks done where you’ll provide all your information, including social networks. Screening Room is being sold to an individual person, not to anonymous people who walk into Walmart and walk out with a box.

The movies will also be watermarked so Screening Room will know not only if a member pirated a movie but which member did it.

However, Screening Room still has a long climb to gain support within the industry.

Filmmakers James Cameron and Christopher Nolan have spoken out against it, as well as Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara. 

A company that is familiar with what Screening Room is trying to accomplish is Prima Cinema, which offers streaming of first-run movies to the super rich for $500 per rental.

When Business Insider asked its CEO Shawn Yeager about the chances of Screening Room being accepted by Hollywood, he said it doesn’t make sense for movie studios to go with the model.

"The movie business is smart enough to realize that you never want to trade analog dollars for digital pennies, which is what would happen under that scenario," he said.

Jackson told Deadline that conversations about Screening Room are ongoing with studio heads and others within the industry.

Read the full story over at Deadline.

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Napster founder and former Facebook president Sean Parker looks to be following Sarah Jessica Parker’s lead, combining a pair of Greenwich Village townhouses into a single mansion.

The tech mogul shelled out $16.5 million for a five-story, 8,200-square-foot townhouse at 38 West 10th Street, next door to the 6,136-square-foot converted carriage house he already owns at 40 West 10th Street, according to public records filed with the city Wednesday and a source with knowledge of the deal.

Parker purchased the property through an LLC linked to a Palo Alto accountancy firm.

Combined, the property would be one of the largest single-family mansions in the neighborhood.

Parker, whose net worth is a reported $2.4 billion, has been a resident of the street since 2011, when he bought the first property, a three-story townhouse complete with an indoor pool, for $20 million.

He hasn't always been popular with his neighbors, who complained in 2014 when he brought in construction crews to rip up the street to install faster internet for his home.

Parker's new property was listed for sale by Azita Aghravi, Maximilian Hakim and Gary Meese of Eastern Consolidated. The brokers declined to comment.

Parker's isn't an original idea. "Sex and the City" star Sarah Jessica Parker nabbed two properties at 273-275 West 11th Street from the United Methodist Women, to convert into a large Greenwich Village home earlier this year.

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Though Sean Parker’s latest startup proposing to offer movies still in theaters for home viewing has received a lot of press, according to an executive in the movie exhibition industry, the company isn’t making much noise in Hollywood.

“It didn’t get a lot of traction in the industry itself,” said Patrick Corcoran, vice president and chief communications officer for the National Association of Theatre Owners, according to Variety. 

Parker’s Screening Room would offer new theatrical releases to stream at home for a rental price of $50 each. Director Peter Jackson, the only person involved with Screening Room who has spoken extensively about it, told Deadline that the mission of the company is to “inject health” into the movie industry by splitting the money Screening Room gets with exhibitors so, as Jackson puts it, the theaters and studios use the money to "improve the [cinematic] experience" and "get more films made."

But Corcoran pointed out at a conference on Thursday that eliminating the window between the theatrical release and when people can see a movie at home wouldn’t help theaters.

“Any talk about shortening the window is not in order to benefit the theatrical market,” he said. “It is because of the difficulties in the home [entertainment] market.”

Though the domestic box office saw a record $11 billion in earnings in 2015 (thanks “Star Wars”), the Blu-ray/DVD industry is continuing to crumble, as it has lost $6 billion in revenue since 2005, according to Variety.

This is likely why Screening Room isn’t gaining many fans on the industry side in Hollywood. Though theatrical box office is only living off a handful of hits a year (which is scary), keeping a window between theatrical and home viewing is critical for making that possible.

Corcoran said at the conference that it’s vital for the industry to protect the “exclusivity” of the theatrical release window.

Currently, the fate of Screening Room is unknown. Neither Parker nor anyone else running the company has commented about it.

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