Cancer startups.

   Yes cancer, according to the WHO, cancer is still a leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for nearly 10 million deaths in 2020. Startups are trying to solve this issue from different perspectives:

How to detect cancer in early stage?

How to make cancer diagnostics affordable?

How to reduce to cost of cancer medication?

How to cure inoperable tumors?

The healthcare market is a little different, healthcare providers are often paid by government or private insurance, that's why insurance companies are seen as potential partners by health startups. One also must know that a lot of the time, healthcare startups are lead by experienced doctors holding an MBA, who are trying to solve a problem they faced in hospitals, through a for profit startup. Those doctors entrepreneurs will also a lot of the time build a team including scientists and engineers from other fields.

We gonna see what 4 prize winners startups are developing.

Logistics

The cost of cancer treatments is very high, how to reduce it?

In the case of cancer, medication is not cheap, according to cancer.gov most cancer drugs launched between 2009 and 2014 were priced at more than $100,000 per patient for one year of treatment.

MediCircle idea is simple, they are developing a concept that will bring expense reduction to the drug supply chain, how? By targeting wasted cancer drugs. In the treatment process, some patients will face a fast progress of the disease, an adverse reaction to medication or unfortunately patient death. This result on unfinished prescription.

It's leftover Cancer medication redistribution, The new process they are proposing is:

1-collect

2-certify

3-redistribute

Their intent is to partner with insurers to eliminate cost for patients.

On the 3 April 2021, brown university published a video on YouTube announcing mediCircle as the winner of 25,000USD first place brown venture prize.

Early Diagnosis

According to cancer.gov cancer have 6 stages, basically diagnosing cancer in it's early stages may increase chances of curing and surviving cancer.

NurLabs is in the field of cancer diagnosis, it's a startup developing a patent-pending, non-traditional, non-invasive liquid biopsy (blood test) platform using materials science and machine learning for early cancer screening.

On the 22 April 2021, the university of Arkansas office of entrepreneurship & innovation published a video on YouTube announcing NurLabs as the winner of 2021 heartland challenge first place with a 50,000USD prize.

Cost reduction

The diagnosis it self is expensive, people can not afford it, this result in more late stage detection and a failure to receive timely treatment which increases mortality risk. Doctors use a needle to extract suspicious tissue,  According to ReCore team, doctors can actually uses :

1-Plastic disposable for $70/biopsy

2-Metal reusable for $40/biopsy

ReCore alternative is a reusable core needle biopsy devices that cost $22/biopsy, this increase global access to procedures that are the gateway to timely cancer treatment. They want to address the growing need for cancer diagnosis around the world specially for under served population.

On the 3 May 2021, Tsai center for innovative thinking at Yale published an article announcing ReCore as the winner of first place 2021 rothberg prize of 15,000USD

Cure

a patient may be able to overcome obstacles like diagnosis cost, early detection. But what if the tumor is inoperable!?

Gradient medical is trying to solve this problem by using an ACE (algorithmically controlled electro-therapy) that delivers electrical pulses to target and eliminate cancerous tumor cells. The adaptative energy delivery enables clinicians to address large inoperable tumors near critical structures such as bile ducts or blood vessels.

On the 13 April 2021 NC state university published a video on YouTube announcing gradient medical as a first place winner of the Daugherty endowment track with a prize of 25,000USD.