Dr. Selin Kurnaz of Massive Bio Explains the Need to Operationalize Patient Support in Precision Cancer Care
12/19/19
In this episode, we speak with Dr. Selin Kurnaz, CEO and cofounder of Massive Bio, who led a panel at the Precision Medicine Leadership Summit in Philadelphia. The panel discussion, Precision Medicine Clinical Trials and Novel Designs: Levering Data, ‘Omics’, AI and Policy focused on the importance of increasing patient accessibility to clinical trials, an issue that drove Dr. Kurnaz to cofound her company.
Dr. Kurnaz says that it is not enough for clinical trials to exist or even to be listed to ClinicalTrials.gov if cancer patients in rural areas cannot access those trials in a practical way. She says that because ClinicalTrials.gov is not structured to match or prescreen cancer patients for clinical trials, it is offering massive amounts of information that cannot be practically applied.
And, even when patients can find a match, she notes that barriers such as geography and income can prevent cancer patients, who are already overwhelmed by the realities of their diseases, to do what is necessary to participate in trials.
In her work at Massive Bio, Kurnaz is developing a central place that connects cancer patients and their treating oncologist with cutting edge clinical trials as well as advanced care plans. She believes that by working collaboratively, those involved in providing cancer care can ensure every cancer patient has equal access to leading-edge therapies and emerging clinical trials, regardless of where they live or their ability to pay.
At Trapelo, collaborating to provide the best care to every cancer patient is our mission too, so we were especially inspired by our discussion with Dr. Kurnaz and grateful for her time.
We hope you'll tune in to the full episode above.
Download the full transcript of the episode here (pdf).
Like what you hear? Please spread the joy...
-
Share the Precision Medicine Podcast with your friends
-
Leave a review and subscribe in your favorite podcast app!
-
Follow us on Twitter @PMPbyTrapelo
-
Follow us on Linked In
Don't miss the next episode...
About Our Guest
Dr. Kurnaz is the Lead Founder and CEO of Massive Bio, Inc. After emigrating from Turkey and completing a PhD at the University of Michigan, receiving multiple engineering degrees, Selin spent more than a decade specializing in delivering revenue enhancement, margin optimization and capital efficiency improvements for Healthcare and Life Science companies. Selin was one of the co-founders of EY’s Private Equity Value Creation before she has experienced a family situation in cancer. Then, she founded Massive Bio to de-bottleneck the access issues between cutting edge cancer treatments and cancer patients that are predominantly treated at community practices. Selin has engaged multiple stakeholders (patients, oncologists, payers, and pharmaceutical companies), coordinated observational studies, and optimized clinical workflows. Selin has written and spoke extensively about the optimization of artificial intelligence, operations and value added services to disrupt clinical trial enrollment value chain. Massive Bio is an alumni of eLab and PhilipsHealthworks Precision Cancer Care start-up acceleration programs.
Connect:
On Twitter at @MassiveBio
On Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/selinkurnaz/