Cancer treatment is often a guessing game — only 1 in 4 patients benefits from a therapy, while most face toxic side effects with little chance of success. At Pathway Bio, we’re changing that by creating a detailed tumor “map” using AI and advanced lab testing, showing doctors not just who will respond, but why. From a single biopsy, we grow biological avatars of a patient’s tumor to safely test therapies and provide clinicians with clear, prioritized guidance. With this approach, we can dramatically improve outcomes, avoid ineffective treatments, and give every patient the best shot at personalized care. Your support ensures this transformative technology reaches patients now, saving lives, reducing suffering, and guiding smarter cancer care.
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Cancer treatment can often feel like guesswork — some patients respond to a therapy, while many do not. In fact, only about 1 in 4 people experience a meaningful benefit from anti-cancer drugs, and even cutting-edge therapies can fail or cause serious side effects in 70% of patients.
At Pathway Bio, we’re changing that. Using AI and advanced lab testing, we create a detailed “map” of each tumor, revealing not just who is likely to respond to a treatment, but why. This empowers doctors to make smarter decisions and gives every patient the best chance to receive the right therapy from the very start.
We’re seeking your support to validate a revolutionary approach that gives patients the best chance to receive the right therapy from the very start — improving outcomes and saving healthcare systems money. Our end-to-end platform begins the moment a patient’s biopsy arrives in our lab.
Using AI and advanced lab technologies, we make this process faster, smarter, and continuously improving. By creating a realistic tumor environment outside the body, we can test therapies before they reach the patient, giving doctors confidence and giving patients a better shot at effective treatment.
This project will prove our approach works, bringing precision medicine to patients today and transforming clinical decision-making.
We’re raising $300,000 to support 30 patients and prove that our platform can predict the right therapy from the start. Here’s how the funds will be used:
These funds directly support creating a detailed tumor “map” for each patient and testing how well our system predicts real-world treatment responses.
We’ve teamed up with leading medical institutions, including Mayo Clinic, Tufts Oncology Medical School, and Moffitt Cancer Institute, giving us access to lab space, expert scientists, and real patient tumor samples.
With this support, we can validate the predictive power of our platform and accelerate its integration into clinical care. Our goal is simple: no patient should receive toxic therapies that won’t work for them. At the same time, we are building strong clinician advocacy to bring this transformative technology to patients more quickly and confidently.
The initial platform was co-invented at Mayo Clinic, led by 60 clinicians within their Center for Individualized Medicine. Building on this momentum, we’ve worked with 400 patients across 23 different cancer types, creating microcancers and testing up to 326 therapies. Our approach — moving from a patient biopsy to a clinical report that guides therapy decisions — is now ready to be validated for broader use. By matching our lab results with actual patient outcomes, we can demonstrate the predictive power of our platform and show it can deliver results in just two weeks. This validation will open doors to federal grants, private investment, and partnerships, ultimately allowing our test to be available in certified labs so clinicians can order it and give patients the best chance at effective, personalized treatment.
Without funding and further validation, our technology risks never reaching the patients who need it most. That means countless individuals would continue receiving treatments that may not work, wasting precious time, causing unnecessary suffering, and driving up healthcare costs. In the U.S. alone, 800,000 people diagnosed each year with late-stage cancers face therapies that fail to address their unique tumors, leaving them with limited options as the disease progresses.
Our mission is clear: ensure every patient receives the treatment that is right for them from the start. If we don’t act now, patients will continue to pay the price — with their health, their hope, and, too often, their lives.
Evaluation of tumor response to immune checkpoint inhibitors by a 3D immunotumoroid model
Co-founder and CEO
Bobby left Illumina to pursue Pathway Bio, inspired by his friend who lost her life to cancer, the grit he saw in other founders to change the world and people with cancer to address the way in which we treat cancer patients. Previously, Bobby headed up Global Entrepreneurial & Venture Development at illumina, developing models that will accelerate the creation of genomics and VC backable startups. He co-created Illumina for Startups and co-launched Illumina accelerator UK. Prior to this, he was Head, Market and Business Development Illumina EMEA, leveraging next generation technologies to drive next generation therapeutics and diagnostics in Cancer. His interest has always been at the intersect of patients, technology and science, having the privilege of spending some time in the NHS and several years at Roche, in various roles. His background is Neuroscience, Genetics, IT. He continues to support the startup ecosystem, through his engagements at universities, co-chair of SBRI and lending his experience to those trying to make a change.
Co-founder and VP of Data and Artificial Intelligence
With 20+ years of experience across startups, academia, and industry, she has built and led teams developing AI-powered data platforms, multi-omic pipelines, and predictive models that support NIH initiatives and drug discovery. Widely published with nearly 2,000 citations, she focuses on turning complex data into actionable insights that accelerate therapies and improve patient outcomes
Chief Scientific Officer
Panos is a cancer biologist whose research explores how cell adhesion signalling events regulate tumor growth, invasion, and metastasis. By uncovering how these mechanisms become disrupted in cancer, his team aims to identify new ways of tackling cancer. The Anastasiadis Lab also combines advanced cell biology with genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics to define oncogenic pathways in individual patient tumors. In collaboration with the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine, the lab launched the Ex Vivo project, which tests therapies in patient-derived models across multiple cancer types to inform personalized treatment, and brings this technology to Pathway Bio. Panos has extensive service on national NIH study sections, as chair of the Cancer Biology department at Mayo Clinic, and plays leadership roles within Mayo Clinic’s comprehensive cancer center.
