Israeli startup helps cancer patients find the right clinical trials

People with cancer often have to endure a long and difficult battle with a disease that, according to the World Health Organization, is among the top ten causes of death worldwide. For many, finding the right treatment option becomes a complex and exhausting task, as they have to study the specifics of traditional chemotherapy and radiotherapy, surgical methods, as well as review thousands of clinical trials of experimental anti-cancer drugs and alternative methods.

Some companies are developing special services aimed at making it easier for cancer patients to find the optimal therapy option. By using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automated data processing algorithms, they create relevant services and search mechanisms designed to help cancer patients determine their course of action, especially when it comes to clinical trials through which doctors hope to find and improve new treatment methods and drugs against cancer.

Take, for example, the New York-based company Belong, founded by two Israeli entrepreneurs. It has developed a social network for cancer patients that facilitates their access to the opinions of authoritative medical professionals and allows them to communicate with people who have similar diagnoses. This is a kind of platform through which cancer patients can ask professionals their questions, connect with other patients, and use their own Belong service to find suitable clinical trials.

However, as experience has shown, finding the necessary studies is quite a challenging task. The Google search engine can easily confuse patients looking for the optimal experimental treatment. Treating doctors and oncologists, in turn, simply cannot keep track of the thousands of studies currently being conducted worldwide. According to data from the publication Applied Clinical Trials from 2007, even companies that specialize in finding the necessary medical studies can "create additional difficulties" for patients and provoke "an obvious conflict of interest," considering that special services are usually promoted by sponsors.

Perhaps that is why, as statistics show, the number of people registering to participate in clinical trials is currently rapidly declining.

Personal experience. How the new startup was born

TrialJectory, a startup launched last year with offices in Tel Aviv and New York, aims to optimize the process of finding suitable medical studies for patients. The idea for the project belongs to the CEO and co-founder of the company, Tzvia Bader, who has extensive experience in high technology, particularly related to massive databases, and has herself gone through a difficult journey battling cancer.

"I was lucky to live near New York and have good health insurance, so I had the opportunity to go to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center— where I was offered to join a clinical trial," says Bader. After one unsuccessful trial, she registered for another, which turned out to be successful and helped her beat cancer. "I wanted my decision to be as well thought out and considered as possible, so before agreeing to participate in specific studies, I monitored the internet for a long time and was shocked that I couldn't find even the slightest information about them," she adds.

Bader first encountered the difficulties of finding suitable medical trials twenty years ago when her mother was diagnosed with a malignant tumour. She says their oncologist did not have the necessary information, and she had to spend days and nights online to find any data. "Nineteen years have passed since then, I was diagnosed with a tumour, and nothing has changed – I still can't find the necessary information," she notes. "In the end, this search became something of a passion, an obsession for me."

How the service works

TrialJectory operates through a free interactive website. A patient can register on the company's site and provide information about their condition and diagnosis. According to Bader, the main difficulty in finding suitable studies lies in the need to consider specific criteria, depending on the type and stage of cancer, as well as other individual characteristics of each patient.

She assures that TrialJectory provides such search accuracy: "Based on the patient's profile that we have, we run an algorithm to find the optimal clinical trials for them, so instead of several hundred results, they receive two, three, or five, but those that most closely match their diagnosis, individual characteristics, and needs." To scan the countless studies and generate recommendations, the service uses an artificial intelligence-based algorithm.

The new startup generates revenue from pharmaceutical companies conducting studies to which TrialJectory directs patients. "This is our principle, our mission, part of our values – we do not take money from patients," emphasizes Tzvia Bader. After the service selects recommendations for studies for a specific patient, it chooses the one that suits them best. Then TrialJectory contacts the pharmaceutical company conducting the selected study and organizes the patient's participation in it.

Bader notes that pharmaceutical companies have a strong incentive to pay for such a service. "Currently, 94% of all clinical trials are significantly behind schedule due to recruitment issues," she says. "Additionally, about 30% of studies close in the third phase due to a lack of subjects." All of this, according to her, is a compelling reason for such companies to invest in a service that can provide them with candidate participants.

According to data from the startup's official website, it currently has a database of about 18,000 studies that require around 12 million participants.

Bader divides her competitors in the clinical trial recruitment market into three groups: independent recruiters, services operating based on specific hospitals, and search engines specializing in finding suitable studies.

Independent recruiters act as brokers, buying access to patient databases or receiving requests from patients and connecting with those who meet the criteria for various clinical trials. Bader notes that although such recruiters generally manage to find the necessary studies for specific patients, their methods are "low-tech" and "small-scale." Nevertheless, TrialJectory views them as potential partners.

Services operating based on medical centers function similarly to independent recruiters, but unlike them, they use their own databases when selecting optimal clinical studies for their patients. Other companies develop and apply special search engines. One of the most well-known belongs to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which private companies have attempted to improve using their own software. Such search engines, however, as Bader notes, yield too many results, which often negates the patient's efforts to find a suitable study.

On the startup's services, which launched in December last year, several hundred clients have already registered. Currently, TrialJectory is focused on finding optimal studies for melanoma patients, and plans to launch similar services for patients with colorectal and breast cancer in the near future. At the same time, the company is negotiating with pharmaceutical firms, but according to Bader, it is still too early to name specific names.

TrialJectory is currently in the process of attracting investments and has already raised about half a million dollars from private investors in the high-tech sector. Additionally, it is negotiating with venture capital firms to raise additional funds.

Digital health and empowering patients

The concept of TrialJectory is an example of ideas promoted by digital health companies, namely – empowering each patient. Advanced technologies in telemedicine, artificial intelligence, social networks, and diagnostics increasingly allow patients to take charge of their health alongside their treating physicians. More and more people are seeking a "second opinion" from doctors after having self-diagnosed using various online resources. All of this leads to a rethinking of the patient's role as a "consumer."

TrialJectory provides its users with free and direct access to information for which they would have to pay when consulting specialists. The system is also designed to educate patients about the variety of options available to them, allowing them to make more informed, personalized decisions.