I'm a cancer biologist building tools to support a new modality of high value, low toxicity cancer treatment—including the first clinically validated predictive biomarker test for antifibrotic therapy for cancer. While I was in grad school, my aunt was diagnosed with advanced cancer. Despite having "excellent" health insurance, her treatments cost over $100K in out-of-pocket expenses. Even the best health insurance is not the shield we expect it to be when we need it the most, for one heartbreaking reason: families of patients with advanced cancer are often driven by desperation to seek out non-reimbursable treatments when all else has failed, only to find themselves drowning in debt in the wake of grief and loss.Cancer isn’t just a health problem—it’s a growing economic problem. Expensive new therapies are merely transforming the former into the latter, because cancer debts can now outlive cancer patients by years or decades. Unbelievably, the annual price tag for new oncology medicines launched in 2022 was $260,000, up from $63,534 in 2012. This is obviously outrageous. As a result, payers are under pressure and passing along the cost—nearly half of American patients with advanced breast cancer are currently being chased by debt collectors due to mounting medical debt. Drug toxicity may worry you, but financial toxicity will keep you up at night. This is why MeCo Diagnostics' lead asset is a predictive biomarker test for breast cancer that can harness an FDA-approved, generic-emergent antifibrotic drug that will soon cost pennies on the dollar compared to any other targeted therapy for breast cancer. Moreover, it is well-tolerated by patients and has a long established safety profile.Legislation may not solve the cancer drug affordability crisis, but we're betting that the free market will.Patients who may benefit from antifibrotic therapy can be matched using our MeCo Score test, which has been evaluated in 4 studies comprised of nearly 4000 patients, working with our collaborators at Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, George Washington University, UArizona and the Spanish National Cancer Research Center. Our Phase II/III randomized controlled trial in early-stage luminal breast cancer is set to begin in 2025.Our team’s research has been published in Cell, Science, Cancer Cell, Cell Reports, Nature Communications, Clinical Cancer Research, etc.We are venture-backed, and we have over 100 years of combined experience in diagnostics and therapeutics. Please reach out to learn more.Join our mission.