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Billionaire Sean Parker is nerding out on cancer research. Science has never seen anyone quite like him

Billionaire Sean Parker has spent more than $250 million on cancer research — and immersed himself in a world of enterprising scientists. Science has never seen anyone quite like him.

Soon after cancer immunotherapy pioneer Jim Allison won the Nobel Prize in medicine last October, his billionaire benefactor Sean Parker called with a cryptic message: Someone would need to be home on Friday afternoon. A delivery was coming.

Allison’s longtime collaborator and wife, Dr. Padmanee Sharma, initially demurred. The delivery could be left at the front door of their Houston home. She and Allison could pick it up later.

No, Parker said. You need to be there. 

And so Sharma, who herself is a pathbreaking immunologist, made sure to be home that afternoon. Sure enough, two men showed up in a van they had driven from Austin, about three hours away. They unloaded some 20 blocks of ice, which had been wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags, shrink-wrapped, and packed with dry ice.

In Allison and Sharma’s backyard, the men began assembling the ice blocks. Gradually, a sculpture took shape: It was a disk, some 8 feet tall and 1 foot thick, meant to resemble a giant Nobel Prize medallion. A black sand slurry frozen inside the sculpture created an unmistakable image of Allison’s face: his thin-rimmed glasses, his scruffy beard, and his unruly hair hanging down to his shoulders.

Read more: The Parker Institute looks to grow, leveraging outside donors and equity stakes

As the ice blocks turned into a work of art, Sharma snapped photos and sent them to Allison, who was at work at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Allison shared them with his lab members and clinical investigators, and invited everyone over for an impromptu party.

As if anticipating the festivities, Parker had also sent over half a dozen bottles of whiskey, perfect for the sculpture’s crowning touch: a built-in ice luge. At the top of the sculpture was a funnel, leading to a narrow channel snaking down through the disk, all designed to allow the booze to flow into a glass waiting at the bottom.

A small plaque at the foot of the sculpture spelled out what Parker had in mind: His gift was a “temporary Nobel Prize,” a placeholder until Allison could claim the real thing in Stockholm. 

It was indeed temporary. “This being Texas, by the next day at noon there was nothing left but a couple handfuls of sand,” Allison told STAT.

The ephemeral sculpture cost around $10,000, and Parker said, one of the men who assembled it in the backyard that afternoon. Leahy has been an ice sculptor for 15 years, usually carving for events like weddings and corporate holiday parties. He’d never fulfilled a custom order for a Nobel Prize winner before. Not until a representative for Sean Parker called.

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