Naji Gehchan: Welcome to SpreadLove in Organizations, the healthcare leadership podcast where we explore leadership with purpose.
Naji Gehchan: I’m Naji your host. Joined today by Selin Kurnaz CEO and co-founder of Massive Bio, a health tech company, improving access to cancer clinical trials through AI and data driven solutions.
Seline holds a PhD in mechanical engineering. And brings over a decade of experience in life sciences, strategy and operations. Inspired by Higher Families Cancer Journey, Celine launched massive bio in 2015 to make cutting edge treatments more accessible, particularly in underserved communities. Under her leadership, the company has onboarded over 160,000 patients and built a global network of sites, partners, and advocates.
Sine is also a recognized voice for women in tech and digital health innovation. It is so great, uh, to see you again sine and have you with me today.
Selin Kurnaz: Thank you so much, Najee, for having me. It’s a wonderful opportunity to talk to you today.
Naji Gehchan: I had love to first, uh, hear more about your personal story and how it links to this, uh, great inspiring work you’re doing.
Selin Kurnaz: Yeah, so frankly in my personal story, I was not that kind of a kid on a lemonade stand, and I’m going to be the entrepreneur of all time. So the story has started with a much more well structured and planned story, you know, for those. Of us that has been grow up in outside the United States. You know, if you’re smart, you need to go into science, and then if you go into science, there’s a certain level of, uh, career paths that you have to follow.
So my story was in that one. You know, I, I studied engineering and go into a traditional route of working in a large and respected company. But while I was going through that, you know, I became exposed to private equity and the world of investment and I very much liked that. Uh, and then I was in process of opening up my own growth equity fund and investing companies at different growth stages.
And it was a very well planned, very well articulated career path, and that was also very much supported to my upbringing and everything that my family thought. That I have a job and that job is delivering, uh, its purpose with the financial freedom and so on and so forth. But then once the family hit with the world, uh, of cancer, everything has changed because historically, I was just trying to think this is going to be like a sighting in addition to my job.
Because coming to United States, going to PhD, going into that layers in the private equity. It took so much effort, so much, you know, resilience and I had a very well articulated plan, but then, uh, taking that entire plan, putting it aside, was absolutely very crazy thought for me. And I said, okay, let me try to do this thing as a, you know, a hobby or a side job, try to fix certain things.
But at, you know, six months after I have recognized that I was significantly underestimating the amount of work, the amount of stamina, the amount of everything that you need to do to change even a minute thing in the world of healthcare. And after I get that enlightening moment, then I said, okay, this is not going to be a hobby or a part-time job.
Then I have to put my everything into helping cancer patient to get access to clinical trials or anything beyond that. Then I left my job, uh, at Ernst and Young, which I was very close to being a partner, uh, and, uh, basically dedicated myself to the ma massive bio and the mission of Massive Bio. I don’t regret a second, but I have to admit that I was significantly underestimated the amount of, uh, challenge and the resilience that is required to build these kind of businesses.
Naji Gehchan: Well, thank you so much. Same for, for sharing this part of your journey. So I’m now intrigued, you’re open for another question, uh, about all the challenges. It’s quite a leap from engineering to healthcare health back and all the complexities of clinical trial. So I’d love to hear a little bit more about the challenges, how you’re applying your problem solving skills you’ve probably had as an engineer.
And, and maybe your leadership aspect into this, ’cause you’re such a human centered, uh, leader and what you’re doing is impacting patient at a really individual level of the toughest moments of their journey and stories. So I’d love to hear the hurdles, but also how you’re applying and transitioning and you transition to that word.
Selin Kurnaz: Yeah. So I think one of the things that I’m a big advocate is that, you know, clinical operations right now mostly done by people who has particular experience in how to execute clinical operations. But I think there are different disciplines, like engineering needs to be integrated, uh, in order to be able to work with, uh, clinical operations.
Because in the world of clinical operations. We’re not really changing the clinical trial itself, but we are changing the enablers to make that clinical trial successful. And for that purpose, you need to be, of course, knowledgeable about the clinical trial process, but you still need to. You know, have other disciplines and the involvement of those disciplines in order to solve the patient recruitment problem to the uh, clinical.
Trial, and those are very systematic approach problems that you may not necessarily find in the DNA of clinical operations in the DNA of clinical operations. Everything has to be in the FDA regulatory framework, and there’s a lot of complex processes that needs to be distilled. That creates the, uh, efficacy, uh, and the efficiency for the patient to have that safe environment, to have that drug and go into the next day in their journey.
And that requires a very nuanced subject matter expertise for the field. But patient recruitment, you have to find a patient, you have to prescreen the patient. You have to do the last mile of that patient that’s not necessarily in that regulatory framework, and that is much less scripted, which means you need to innovation driven mindset in order to be able to solve those large scale problems with very articulated, automated and scalable manner.
That’s what I am trying to play in advocacy, and I’m trying to marry engineering with clinical operations because I see that the patient recruitment problem in the world of oncology is a problem that has been there for very, very long years. It’s not that massive buy has invented that problem, and frankly, it is not even the top 20 pharma, uh, companies has invented that problem.
That problem was always there for decades. But what I’m trying to do is that I’m trying to bring a differentiated approach to solve a good old problem, maybe in a way that people haven’t thought before. And I also want that problem solving methodologies to not only potentially adapt just for patient recruitment, every aspect of the patient journey that can be used to further accelerate an advancement of the drug development process.
Because there is an individual patient clinical outcome improvement. But at the same time, we also wanted to go into the population level, learning from the previous journey of those patients and applying these, uh, you know, insights and learnings for the future, uh, drug development of the patients that, so that those patients can get less impacted for some of the things that the previous patients has been impact.
Naji Gehchan: This is, this is really impactful and meaningful, obviously for patients and, and at massive bio, uh, you guys have been leveraging, uh, AI before it was, or it became a thing right now. Yeah, it
Selin Kurnaz: was before Sexy and a thing and uh, we were using that. Yeah.
Naji Gehchan: Yeah. So you’re using it and really to solve, as you said, like one of the oldest and probably one of the most complex problems, which is clinical trial access.
Uh, and, uh, and enrollment, uh, and really we know in oncology, but also in other diseases several times, the clinical trial is the best option for patients to get the most novel therapies. And sometimes patients unfortunately don’t know that. Uh, and, and you’ve been solving for that 160,000 patients, uh, as I said in the beginning.
So can you tell us a little bit more what you’re doing differently? And how you’re thinking about it. I heard you say about the patient journey and trying to solve for it. I’m hearing also some predictability work for you to be able for the future patients, not to live what the, the first patients are living.
But tell us a little bit more from a tangible, how, how are you doing a tangible difference for patients? ’cause I know you do.
Selin Kurnaz: Sure, sure. So let me give you the more like the foundationally, how we are different. Then I’m also going to focus more on the AI aspect and how that AI is actually creating the outcomes for the patients.
So in terms of the differences, first and foremost, we are oncology and hematology dedicated company. So we are not. In different disease types. We are the people in the world of cancer. Unfortunately, cancer is so difficult and challenging, and I think you cannot serve to multiple masters at this point in time.
We only serve to one master, and that master is very difficult to, you know, unbundle because cancer is always very strong, unfortunately, uh, relative to the humankind. So that’s one. And then the second thing is that we’re looking at this thing at global scale because there’s a lot of companies, you know, trying to do this thing at a US level, some section of the us, which is important, but in order to be able to create real impact.
You need to be in the world of the top 20 pharma because they have fairly large scale clinical trials that impacts very large amount of patients. And in order to be able to get into the map of these guys, you absolutely need to work globally. The second aspect is that. You know when a pharma companies are looking for these inclusion, exclusion criteria, they’re looking at very, you know, particular patient populations, like patients that they look for first line, second line and above.
And the way how you find a first line patient is very different. Then how you find a patient from, you know, second line and above. You know, if it’s a first line osm, small cell lung cancer, you need to go into a pulmonologist. But if it’s a second line and above, you can go to the good old medical oncologist.
So you should have that flexibility and adaptability to work with different patient acquisition channels. Because if you’re a company just working with certain EMR integrations, you’re very limited. With the set of those, and then it’s very impossible almost to get back and then go into the direct to patient.
So you need to have that flexibility. And thirdly, which I’m also also going to consolidate with the artificial intelligence, you need to do this thing for the entire steps in the value chain because there are three different. Sections in the patient enrollment value chain. There is a patient identification.
There is the in the middle master pre screening, and then the third bucket is a last mile concierge enrollment. These are the each three pieces of the puzzle. If you do not do a good job in any of them, the deal is off. The challenge is to be. Equally successful in three of them, where each of them is more like a noble price level, difficulty, uh, problems, and you, it’s, it’s hard to get everything in order.
In terms of the ai, there are three layers of AI that we use. The first one is this master per screening. What that means is the following, when you wanted to get prescreen for a clinical trial, it takes about 25 minutes. In order for manually a nurse to prescreen you for a single trial with your medical records or any of the detailed clinical information that you have, given that we have 14,000 active recruiting and with some information, even 19,000 active recruiting oncology clinical trials@clinicaltrials.gov, that equates to 8.09 months.
For a patient to get pre-screened for all these trials, and if you are a patient at a very rapidly, uh, you know, progressing, uh, you know, subtype of cancer, that is completely unacceptable. So that 8.09 months need to be reduced to days, if not minutes. And that’s what we are trying to do to use the artificial intelligence.
To structure the medical information of the patient, to structure the molecular diagnostic testing of the information, plus to structure all the inclusion exclusion criteria that we receive@clinicaltrust.gov. And if we have protocols from pharma, wonderful. We also integrate that so that we do that mass matchmaking at scale to reduce the amount of time, maybe by 99%.
So that we can get to that patient real time, that these are the options for you to participate. So that’s kind of one application. And what is in it for the patient? The patient sits down in their living room, they don’t lose time, they don’t lose money, and they have a peace of mind to understand what is the right trial further.
So that they can activate their clinical trial enrollment process by being their own advocate. You know, because you, of course, you work collaboratively to a physician, but 50% of the physicians don’t even talk about a clinical trial. Maybe intentionally, not intentionally, you know, they don’t have the time in a lot of the cases.
But as a patient you can activate that process by yourself, which is like very important for me. And when you activate that massive bio is become your complimentary nature of, for you to operationalize that activation. The second part is this. Cancer patient’s journey. There has to be some level of prediction in that cancer patient journey.
You know, if you’re a multiple myeloma patient, the progression takes a lot of time and you really need to predict when is going to be the next progression in that patient’s journey. When the next M spike value is going to come to a level that I can predict that you are going to be a, um, uh, you are going to have the progression and how to.
You know, engage with the patient based on their clinical journey and what is the best time to intervene for a clinical trial because it’s not about, you have multiple myeloma and there is like thousands of clinical trials for multiple myeloma. Are you at the right timing in your disease stage and your clinical criteria?
And that’s where AI helps for us to identify that perfect timings to intervene and work with the patient. So that’s the kind of the second aspect of the leverage intelligence. The third aspect. There is also a lot of supply chain work that we do in the, in the last mile. We do a lot of patient engagement.
We do a lot of provider engagement. We develop these, all these applications with different chat bots that they basically sometimes work with agentic ai in order to be able to engage, you know, if you’re a patient, you have to be able to understand how many clinical trials often that you have. When is the next pre, because there are three outcomes.
Of the clinical trial journey, you are either fully eligible to at least one trial, which is wonderful. And then you moved into this last mile process. The second one is that you may be fully ineligible. You may be very late stage in the game that we have to look for other, uh, options for that patient.
And then the third option, which is typically the 80% of the patients, they’re in the middle. They’re not ineligible, but they’re not fully eligible either. So they are partially eligible, which we call those patients, are the patients in the virtual wait list. What that means is that they, that patient’s medical information needs to be received, and after receiving those medical information at certain intervals, then we determine if the eligibility has been insured or not insured.
And in that journey, those patients has to be engaged. You know, having in applications use of artificial intelligence that automates and scale that patient engagement, having an application that activates the physician for pre-screening their patients for referral to another site. Those are all the beauty of ai.
So that an individual patient can activate themself, an individual physician can activate themselves so that we are not restricted by the structural issues of the healthcare ecosystem. And that’s where AI can support. But keep in mind that in, in the world of healthcare, as you are also the master on this, just AI is not helpful.
AI needs to be integrated. The workflow and it needs to be invisible. And then AI also needs to be supported with these high value added customer services. So for example, in our last mile services, we refer the patient to a site and set up the uh, screening appointment. You know, yes, there is some kind of component that runs in the background, but there’s still an interaction that is needed.
If the clinical research coordinator at site doesn’t open the phone, I need to have a nurse that calls that, uh, you know, clinical research coordinator to convince that that appointment needs to be received two days from now as opposed to 23 days from now. And that customer support and high value added service has also needs to be integrated in the world of healthcare to have a really material impact how this AI needs to be felt in the daily life of humankind.
Naji Gehchan: Yeah, and this is, well, it’s incredible what, what you’re doing and what you’re, uh, solving for. Um, and I love how you’re bringing it. You know, we always use, like, use cases, et cetera, for AI are more important than all the, you know, hype around the terms. Uh, but really here you’re going again from the core of what will you do and your mission of improving those patient journeys.
And making sure patients get the best treatment options. And if it’s a clinical trial, it’s through clinical trials for you. Uh, and you’re solving each part of them, you know, like those last examples you gave. It’s real issues, you know, like today to even set an appointment. So really using the best tools for you to be able to.
Prescreen to select to get the patient in front of their, uh, sites. Uh, and, and, um, and investigators are really, really great to, to be able to do it. Uh, so I’d love now to, you know, go, go back on things you touched in the beginning, building the company, you know, from an idea to now having. Hundreds of thousands of patients impacted.
Your company grew. I think you’re more than 80 people in the company,
Selin Kurnaz: right? We’re 88 people working in 17 countries.
Naji Gehchan: Wow. And so tell me how, how did this go? How did you scale your vision and how do you keep it now and keep your people grounded? In this mission, you believed in the, when you started the company, now that it is grown to 88 people?
Selin Kurnaz: Well, I think the first thing is resilience because if there are hundred words that I hear on a given day, 99 of them is no. So if I basically run my life with nos, I had to shut down the company in two weeks. So this is a very, uh, challenging journey and you need to be uber resilient to, uh, move forward the next day assuming nothing has happened in the previous day and you haven’t punched in the face.
So that is very, very important. The second thing is that. Uh, you need to have the right co-founders and the right team because, you know, although you know I’ve been talking to you in here, I won’t be talking to you in here if this level of success has not been generated with all the people that I have.
So you need to believe in it. And you have to make sure that the other people around you has to believe in it. And I think there’s an easy way to solve that because you can talk everything you know, and then say, I believe in it. I believe in it. But if you are not the hardest working in the team to do it by yourself, to show it, to work on it, to sweat on it, people are not going to believe in you.
Or people are not going to believe in just the words. So you have to also show it, you know, if something is very difficult, put yourself into that very difficult situation. So when the team sees that, you know, you as the founder at 2:00 AM trying to fix something, then people respects you and they start to do as well.
So you cannot do this thing, uh, in my famous uh, word, which you cannot do this thing in your fingertips. You have to really immerse yourself into the situation. And then the third thing is that you need to have early adapters from a customer standpoint, uh, as well as ecosystem standpoint because you can kill yourself.
But if nobody is adapting, then uh, that’s also very challenging. And keep in mind that convincing this large pharma for these new approaches is monumentally difficult. Uh, ’cause their process is very long. Uh, they always look for very quantifiable metrics to say, uh, because they, they get a lot of options, so they have to filter out which option is the right option, not option, but there is nothing in the world that has become a, you know, a sensation, not in an overnight sensation, but even a sustainable sensation.
Without having certain level of infrastructure and investment, especially in the world of healthcare, this doesn’t happen overnight. So finding those people that believe in it and working with those people are significantly important. You know, I have all these people in these fairly large pharma companies.
I know who to call. I know who to cry in front. You know, I know who to to, you know, like fight this thing for me because these people know that. It requires time, investment and a lot of challenging days, and you need to have people in on the pharma side that’s an advocate of you internally and championing your company inside pharma.
Uh, because, and I’m think, uh, basically thinking that those champions are probably getting a lot of inertia and resistance even internally. Uh, to fight for this, uh, stuff, but the, those forward looking people are bringing the field forward. Yes. And you need to have some of them.
Naji Gehchan: Yeah. Yeah. And, and a hundred percent.
And you know, when, what you’re saying about fighting crying, uh, again, I think you’re grounded. Uh, and as of those folks in biotech and pharma, we’re all grounded because, and we do this and we fight because we wanna. Better health for patients and, and trying to fix the health equity issues that we face. I, I, I wanna move now to, um, giving you a word, and I would love your first reaction to it.
I, I feel I know the first reaction to the first word, but I’m gonna try it still. The first one is leadership.
Selin Kurnaz: Very important.
Naji Gehchan: What about clinical trials?
Selin Kurnaz: My heart, I guess right now.
Naji Gehchan: Uh, women in health tech,
Selin Kurnaz: uh, challenging.
Naji Gehchan: Oh, I wanna know more now.
Selin Kurnaz: Yeah, because the thing is that. Even if you’re in the United States, which is one of the world’s most, um, forward-looking, uh, countries, uh, and one of the most wealthiest countries, um, you still get, uh, gender biases, uh, especially for in the women, uh, in healthcare because everyone wants to see the women in healthcare in junior positions.
But there are not a lot of people that want to see women in healthcare in senior positions and the very significant decision making level. And, uh, that is problematic ’cause you actually have more resistance. The more move up that you go when you are more junior, when you have less decision making power, people don’t see you as a threat and you don’t get a lot of, you know, resistance ocean level.
But then the more that you go up, the more decision making power that you have, the more you become a potential threat to the mankind. Then, uh, you start to get a lot of reactions and, and sometimes you get reactions that you don’t even know where that reaction is coming from, but then you started to peel that.
But no matter how, the difficult is, I always try not to take it personally. So, because if you take it personally, it’ll go nowhere. I try to take it, not to take it personally and try to digest it. But not dwell on it too much. Uh, and also, you know, like, understand the aspect is that life is not fair and, um, I’m not, you know, seeking for fairness in life, but I am seeking for success in the unfairness of life.
So that’s what I’m trying to do.
Naji Gehchan: Oh, I love this framing. And we, we certainly. Moved forward, but not enough. I’m, I’m a hundred percent with you. And, um, yeah, it’s, uh, it, it’s good to see where we, how far we’ve went, but it’s a journey and we can, we can see, we can go backwards, but there’s still a lot to go forward for, so For sure.
The, the last one is spread love in organizations.
Selin Kurnaz: Well, I think that spreading love should be, uh, the, the Democratic and that law has to be spread to every level, to every person. It needs to be a true meritocracy in that sense. Uh, and as a founder, I honestly don’t believe in titles, frankly. So, you know, like to me, the most junior person. The most inexperienced person is literally the same as me, the most senior and the flashiest title in the organization.
It’s all about sharing the same mission. Uh, and, you know, titles and all that stuff comes with time and all that stuff. You know, if you’re 21, it’s not your mistake. You are just starting. So the important thing is that do you have the business chemistry with that other person? Do you share the common mission and can you compliment each other?
You know, I have my skillset, the other person has their own skillset. Can you kind of, uh, basically bring that harmony together to create the best outcome? And you know, if you look at, in my organization, you know, we are very flat. You know, we don’t have like, oh, you can’t talk to the CEO at in this time, that time this restrictions and all that stuff.
It’s just like. You know, everyone has my, you know, cell phone number. They can call anytime, any hour for any issue. Uh, we are very open.
Naji Gehchan: I love this view of organizations and how you’re framing it. Uh, any final word of wisdom, Celine, for healthcare leaders around the world? Well,
Selin Kurnaz: I’m going to steal from what I’ve said, you know, resilience is key. Uh, being invisible in the world of healthcare, if you try to, you know, impose a particular innovation and change.
Uh, get ready for capital missile location because the way how the healthcare dollars are spent are not necessarily the places where the actual outcomes are generated. And fourth, enjoy the right. So I think, uh, no matter how complicated and challenging and, uh, everything it is, I think the way how I look at it, uh, when I wake up in the morning.
You know, is my family healthy? Uh, is the team intact? That’s it. So other than that, I don’t have a lot of, you know, uh, objective functions for today.
Naji Gehchan: Oh, well, so it’s a great reminder, uh, and you started with resilience. It’s a great reminder also how to keep ourself grounded, uh, as, as leaders, especially, uh, again, you’re, you’re super humble.
In the way you’re doing, but what, what your company did, when we talk about hundreds of thousands of patients who, uh, are now doing better, thanks to the work you’ve done and your partnership with, uh, a lot of people in the ecosystem, because I also see you as a connector between. All those people trying to serve patients, you’re the one actually doing it from the beginning to the last mile, as you call it.
Uh, so thank you again for being with me today. It’s been, uh, a pleasure to talk again with you and, uh, thanks for all your work you do with Massify and all your team.
Selin Kurnaz: Thank you so much Naji, for having you. This was a wonderful, uh, podcast and I definitely look forward to speaking you in the future ones as well.
Naji Gehchan: Thanks for listening to the show. For more episodes, make sure to subscribe to spreadloveio.com or whatever you listen to your podcasts. Let’s inspire, change together and make a positive impact in healthcare one story at a time.
Selin Kurnaz: Wonderful.
Naji Gehchan: Thanks for listening to the show! For more episodes, make sure to subscribe to Spreadloveio.com or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Let’s inspire change together and make a positive impact in healthcare, one story at a time.
Follow us on LinkedIn and connect with us on spreadloveio.com. We’re eager to hear your thoughts and feedback. Most importantly, spread love in your organizations and spread the word around you to inspire others and amplify this movement, our world so desperately needs