DIY Health: How to Fund Your Own Medical Research
What’s the Latest Development?
When breast cancer survivor Molly Lindquist decided she wanted to help others beat the same disease she had bested, she started to think big. To her, it seemed a cancer vaccine or similar genetic therapy were the only true ways to keep the disease from occurring in the first place. But when it came to funding research pointed in those directions, Lindquist found it nearly impossible to locate and connect with experienced professionals. “There wasn’t an easy way to connect directly with research without a lot of going to individual institutions and tracking down the researcher, and coordinating with development offices,” she said.
What’s the Big Idea?
Lindquist decided to make the connections—the ones she had once hoped to find—between medical professionals and small donors by creating a medical crowdfunding site called Consano. “The site currently lists eight projects from three institutions—OHSU Knight Cancer Institute, in Oregon, University of California, San Francisco, and UW Medicine, in Seattle—and allows people to make donations directly to research endeavors. Like on Kickstarter, they also get feedback on progress.” Consano currently features research into uterine, esophageal, and ovarian cancers, but Lindquist wants to broaden the base to include other diseases.
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