The Clayville Foundation is about improving the human condition. Everyone has a personal story about cancer. Ours is Holly Clayville, an extraordinary mom of three who fought the battle of her life against a cancer of unknown primary origin. In her memory, husband Mike created the Clayville Foundation to aid scientists in discovering new links between viruses and cancer initiation. The foundation gives us a way to make a difference in the lives of people with cancer.
We believe the time is ripe for breakthrough developments in viral cancer research that will lead to targeted treatment and enhanced prevention. Why? Major advancements in three key industries are occurring simultaneously that can provide a Mother Lode of insight into our cancer problem. We believe we are incredibly lucky that this is all happening at once.
1. DNA Sequencing. Cancer is a disease of the genome, and advanced gene sequencing technology is being used to identify cancers and their behaviors. The cost of DNA sequencing has plunged by more than a million fold. In 1990 sequencing a single genome cost about $3 billion. Now sequencing can be done in 10 days and cost $1,500. Tomorrow it could take two days and cost $50 or may even be free. Sequencing technology is improving at a pace that is unprecedented. But sequencing speed isn’t the only sea change. The generation of DNA sequencing data has exploded, giving scientists an unprecedented amount of data to mine.
2. Information Technology (IT). The IT industry is in a generational shift as it moves into cloud computing and big data analytics. In the history of the industry, there are only two other instances with such significant shifts in technology: the introductions of the mainframe computer and the client-server model of computing. The current ability to handle both large amounts of data and large computing systems is unprecedented.
3. Data Analytics. Breakthroughs in data analytics have shifted the industry from the traditional model of data correlation to a new transformational model of cause and effect relationships within data. This evolution of data analytics is about creating predictable results.
Our gold nugget in all of this? Cutting-edge technologies and medical science vectors are coming together to find cures to cancer. The biology industry now has a way to create the data, the computer industry has a way to handle the data, and the analytic industry has a way to mine that data to predict outcomes. In other words, we are working to identify the cause of cancer, destroy it and cure the patient.
