1. There are indeed similar efforts in academic labs around the world. The constraint they face is lack of funding to expand their experiments beyond testing drugs on their small sized tumor banks.
Industry labs don't generally have access to primary (from patients) tumors so they have to partner with academics or contract research organizations (CROs). No one institution or CRO has a Glioblastoma tumor bank beyond around 100 patient samples.
These smaller tumor banks don't capture the heterogeniety of the patient population as a whole, so one of the advantages of being a company not tied to an institution is the ability to develop a substantially larger tumor bank that accomplishes this. We accomplish this by acquiring primary tissue through our testing service around the world.
Academics also often rely on standardized assay conditions and commercially available cell lines because their major incentive is to publish their results. Standard methods and cell lines are often preferred by reviewers and working with primary lines is difficult and expensive. Translation to response in patients isn't the primary objective of the screens.
2. Yes, Elizabeth Iorns, a former cancer biologist and the CEO of Science Exchange, is one of the part time YC partners.