SX Startups: Cambridge Cancer Genomics
The Forrest Four-Cast: January 23, 2018
The 2018 SXSW Accelerator Pitch Event has selected 50 startups in 10 categories to show off their skills on March 10 and 11. Winners in each category will be honored at the Accelerator Award Ceremony at 7 pm Sunday, March 11, at the Hilton Austin. The SXSW Accelerator Pitch Event takes place within the Startup & Tech Sectors track of programming.
Based in Cambridge, UK, Cambridge Cancer Genomics is developing tools to enable clinicians and scientists to understand therapeutic response in real time. Through the use of artificial intelligence, CCG can predict a tumor’s evolutionary trajectory and what this may mean for cancer treatment. As one of five finalists in Health and Wearables Technology, they will pitch at 5 pm Sunday, March 11, in Salon AB at the Hilton Austin.
Giving us more insight on the young company is Evaline Tsai, the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Cambridge Cancer Genomics.
Who are you hoping to meet at SXSW 2018?
We’re always looking to meet other companies working in the healthcare space, especially those in cancer, diagnostics and SaaS. Others we’d like to meet include people in media and digital innovators with an interest in transforming healthcare. Also, any hospitals or clinics that might be interested in collaborating with us.
Has Cambridge Cancer Genomics been involved with other pitch events?
We pitched last year at YC Demo Day and at a startup competition in Singapore. These two pitch events taught us how to refine our story and explain our product in layman’s terms. This was extremely useful when we later spoke with people who didn’t have a background in cancer research.
How long has the Cambridge Cancer Genomics team been together?
The team has been working together for two years. We met as we started our research positions at the University of Cambridge and nearby institutions. We collaborated on projects and published academic papers together before starting the company.
What is your competitive advantage?
We track how tumors evolve over the course of a patient’s treatment cycle. By treating each tumor as different and applying ML-led personalization, we are able to offer significant savings in terms of cost and time — allowing repeat biopsies specifically for monitoring treatment response.
Cambridge Cancer Genomics is based in Cambridge, U.K. Tell us more about the startup ecosystem there.
The startup ecosystem in Cambridge has been thriving for the last 20+ years. The combination of funding from U.K.-based VC firms, mentorship from industry leaders and successful founders, and talent from nearby universities creates the perfect environment for entrepreneurship.
What do you enjoy most about the startup experience?
Getting to build impactful products and seeing users interact with something they find valuable. One of the more frustrating aspects about academia is that it can often take years to optimize a technology until it becomes good enough for commercialization. Oftentimes, the research you work on never makes it out of the lab, so you never get the joy of seeing it being used on a daily basis. It’s most exciting to work on technologies that are cutting edge and have the potential to make a real difference in patients lives.
What do you enjoy least?
The main downside is the unconventional working hours. That means having to be constantly “on” even during weekends or working some late nights to meet deadlines. It also means being flexible about meeting times to accommodate for time zones.
Other than Cambridge Cancer Genomics, what is the world’s most intriguing startup at present?
Our friends at Cambridge Bio-Augmentation Systems are really revolutionizing bionics by making them more effective and affordable for amputee patients. They work on standardizing the connection between an amputated stump and any prosthetic. This gives amputee patients a greater selection of prosthetics to connect to their limb using a plug and play adapter.
Person, company, thing or goal. What inspires your team to work harder?
It’s really inspiring when we hear from doctors about how our technology can help them better treat patients in the clinic. They’re really eager to find tools that can help them make the right cancer treatment decision quickly.
What do you know now that you wish you had known before you began the startup journey with Cambridge Cancer Genomics?
The startup journey is more of a marathon than a sprint, though there are obviously a few sprints along the way! That means taking care of ourselves mentally and physically so we can show up to work each day refreshed and ready to go. Calm, a guided meditation app, has been a great tool to help relax and de-stress.
Look for interviews with other SXSW Accelerator finalists in this space between now and March. Startups already profiled as part of this series include Bluefield, 70MillionJobs and PolyPort.
Or, click here to browse the full lineup of startups for SXSW Accelerator 2018.
Hugh Forrest serves as Chief Programming Officer at SXSW, the world’s most unique gathering of creative professionals. He also tries to write at least four paragraphs per day on Medium. These posts often cover tech-related trends; other times they focus on books, pop culture, sports and other current events.
