Our 15th Investment: Trial Library
Improving Health Equity Through Clinical Trials.
Clinical trials outside of the context of medicine and health is not an everyday topic of discussion. There are rules and frameworks in place to protect human research subjects, ensuring safety and fairness on the clinical path to develop novel drugs and other therapies. And yet, these rules and frameworks have failed to ensure accessibility across patient populations to date.
We are thrilled to partner with Dr. Hala Borno, Steve Buck and the Trial Library team as they tackle this pressing matter. As an early stage fund, we value rigor, subject matter expertise and grit among many other founder qualities. We didn’t have to look much further to find a very well-balanced team that could tackle such an important and urgent concept not only in drug development, but also in oncology – the single largest clinical discipline within research studies.
Background
Dr. Borno is one of the nation’s leading investigative oncologists at UCSF (right in our backyard!). Her curiosity and academic intellect has resulted in an extensive list of peer reviewed research and being awarded the Young Investigator award by the Prostate Cancer Foundation.
For NEXT VENTŪRES, clinical trials represent a fascinating opportunity space, ripe for technological innovation. Trial Library has the potential to drive significantly outsized value within healthcare, which is unfortunately plagued by antiquated infrastructure that is riddled with fragmentation, a lack of innovation, and systemic racism.
Study delays and a lack of generalizable conclusions are the result of two major problems at the top of the clinical trials funnel – enrollment friction and the lack of participant diversity (racial/ethnicity and gender), ultimately leading to higher than expected costs and missed signals of efficacy and safety for biopharma sponsors.
If you follow our fund publication regularly, you’re probably aware that we published a deep dive on the current pain points within clinical trials, which was a culmination of our own recent due diligence and research around the space.
Dr. Borno has dedicated the last four years (while still practicing as a full time oncologist) to building out a better motion for clinical trials enrollment that focuses on patient accessibility and provider engagement in research.
Her novel solution, battle tested and approved while at UCSF, leverages algorithmic matching and culturally competent navigation to enable providers to seamlessly remove barriers to patient participation and enrollment.
We couldn’t be more thrilled to partner with the Trial Library team as they embark on their next phase of growth, expanding access to cancer precision medicine while employing a heavy dose of social good.
We are joined by LUX, Unseen Capital, Moving Capital, Incite, and other value-add investors who share the vision of a more healthy and equitable future in healthcare.
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