Got new ideas for cancer research? You could win a million dollars, if you have one!

Medical researchers teamed up with hedge fund managers on Wednesday to offer a new million-dollar prize for the best new idea for cancer research in the hopes of kick-starting innovative approaches.

They invited cancer experts, scientists and the general public to join an Internet-based club and compete for the Gotham Prize for Cancer Research.

Federal funding of cancer research has been flat, and is in fact lower than in recent years when inflation is taken into account, said Dr. Gary Curhan of Harvard Medical School.

And the system of seeking grants -- money to do research -- is based around pleasing either National Institutes of Health supervisors or gatekeepers at the advocacy organizations that pay for research on specific types of cancer, he said.

Curhan teamed up with hedge fund managers Joel Greenblatt and Robert Goldstein of private investment firm Gotham Capital to set up the prize club, found at http://www.gothamprize.org/

"The goal here is to open up the site to people with ideas," Curhan told reporters in a telephone briefing. "The winners of these prizes are not going to be those who are successful in evaluating the idea. It is going to be the person with the best idea."

Read more of this story….