June 5, 2017
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Startup clinical trials matching firm Cure Forward will shut its doors by June 9.
Plans to shutter the business, which was first reported by MedCity News, are due to a lack of funding, the company said. On its website, Cure Forward leadership said the company will continue to work with its patients through the end of the week, but then will close up shop.
“As a team, we are very disappointed not to have met our goals of making clinical trials accessible for those who need them most. We are grateful to the patients, physicians, investigators, advocates, and non-profits who helped us challenge the barriers that patients face in finding trials,” the company announced on its website.
Cure Forward employed 30 people.
Frank Ingari, Cure Forward’s chief executive officer, told MedCity News that the company was unable to secure the necessary funding to maintain operations. Although Ingari said Cure Forward had “substantial support” from one investment source, the company was unable to expand its investor base when it was needed.
That investor was Apple Tree Partners. In 2015, Apple Tree provided $15 million in Series A financing for Cure Forward, MedCity reported.
Cure Forward was created as an online resource to connect cancer patients with clinical trials to find the best treatment options. The company’s Clinical Trials Exchange was developed to provide patients with access to trials they may never have known about, and in turn, also served as a recruiting platform for laboratories conducting those clinical trials.
In his interview with MedCity, Ingari said the business model was not only a “hard thing to scale,” but also a difficult project to fund.
“We learned an awful lot in the process. If someone does not know someone who knows someone at a premier academic hospital, finding a clinical trial is a maddening labyrinth. I think we were close to cracking the code, but it’s a hard thing to scale and a difficult thing for pharma to fund. Our greatest regret is not being able to help these patients,” he said.
Although Cure Forward is dissolving, the company is not immediately turning its back on its patients or future cancer patients. In its website message, Cure Forward said patients should look to the Cancer Support Community for guidance in their treatment options. The community provides a “wealth of resources to patients and their families, including online educational material, a help line, in-depth information about clinical trials, and links to resources for finding a trial,” Cure Forward said on its website.
Cure Forward wasn’t the only company looking to help patients find access to clinical trials. Texas-based ePatientFinder specializes in patient recruitment. Like Cure Forward, the company has a Clinical Trial Exchange platform that allows physicians and clinical sites to leverage electronic health records (EHR) to generate patient referrals and populate trials faster and at a more cost efficient rate.
