Skip to content Skip to footer

the big picture

Why Haven't We Cured Cancer?

Each day brings more news about promising discoveries about cancer. Most of these discoveries will never result in a cure. Why? Our society has been great at funding early scientific discoveries. We have failed to get the job done and make investments to develop many promising discoveries into lifesaving medicines.

If we want to cure cancer, we must  pay for it.”

Dr. Andrew Lo, PhD, MIT, Laboratory for Financial Engineering, Sloan School of Management

Watch Dr. Andrew Lo's Ted Talk to find out why more cures don't get to patients.

We can do better in financing clinical development.

The CanceRx financing model was developed by Dr. Andrew Lo and the Nobel Laureate faculty at MIT’s Laboratory for Financial Engineering. This approach uses bonds to fund long-term, uninterrupted support for clinical development and human trials.

Thanks to significant NIH support, we do well at basic scientific discoveries for cancer cures. However, in the next steps for patients —when research moves to testing safety and efficacy in humans — the pipeline for new cancer treatments falls apart.

Basic and Pre-clinical Research – The US federal government, followed by some philanthropy, funds basic lab research to discover possible new cancer cures. Basic science in cancer research is moving rapidly but has nowhere else to go in the lengthy and costly pathway to patients.

Phase I-II Clinical Development – To be approved as a new cancer treatment, discoveries first must be tested in people. Many new cures never get this far – due to shortfalls of private venture capital.

Phase III-IV Trials & Regulatory Approval Big-Pharma companies often prefer to buy new cancer drugs in later phases. They put the new treatments into large-scale clinical trials to finish proving they are better. Then comes expensive, protracted FDA approval, which can take up to three or more years for patient treatments.

Many new products do not get funding to transition from discovery to development.
why it matters

Many Promising Innovations Can Be Saved With Better Finance

A new drug sitting on the shelf could help you, or someone you know. We need to pick up where discovery leaves off and put more new drugs into human clinical testing.”

Tracy Christianson, CanceRx Clinical Research Consultant

Our Team

Proven in funding cancer research.
Read More

Our Scientific Advisory Board

World-class team guiding our efforts.
Read More

Our CanceRx CRO

Rethinking clinical trials to do more and cost less.
Read More
WHAT IS OUR GAME PLAN?

Accelerating Clinical Studies at Scale

CanceRx leverages financial and technology innovation to create a wholly owned clinical trial network and use it to test more new therapies.

01. Funding research with long-term bonds
02. Evaluating new drugs using the latest science
03. Making human clinical trials more productive
cancerx_white_transparent-sm

No information contained on this website should be construed as a forward-looking statement.

CanceRx Foundation, Inc., is an IRS approved tax-exempt public charitable foundation under Sec. 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code.

CanceRx® is a registered trademark.

To learn more, please call or email:

CanceRx Foundation, Inc.

4830 W Kennedy Blvd, Suite 600
Tampa, FL 33609-2584

Phone: (813) 776-0000

Email: donations@cancerx-foundation.org

CanceRx © 2025. All Rights Reserved.
Go to Top