At Moffitt Innovation Day, Shatana Ellison, CancerX Community Manager, sat down with four of the program's sixteen champions—visionaries who represent a small but impactful slice of the larger champion group driving the future of cancer care. Through these conversations, a powerful story emerged of how the CancerX accelerator is bringing together the brightest minds across healthcare to revolutionize cancer treatment and patient experiences.
Rick Peng, Digital Venture Lead at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, began the day's discussions with a clear vision of what makes CancerX uniquely effective. "Cancer X brings together a lot of different stakeholders from across the healthcare ecosystem," Peng explained. "This includes health systems like Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, includes health systems like Moffitt that are focused on similar things but based in different areas." For Peng, the true value of CancerX lies in this convergence—a recognition that healthcare innovation requires coordination across the entire ecosystem. It's not enough to have brilliant ideas or cutting-edge technology; the most impactful solutions emerge when all stakeholders work in concert. "It requires coordination between everybody, including the companies that are building the solutions, to make these solutions actually have an impact," he noted, emphasizing how CancerX creates a forum where health systems, pharmaceutical companies, payers, and investors can support innovations that address unmet needs in cancer care.
This theme of connection was echoed by Ian Chiang, Partner at Flare Capital, who brought both professional expertise and personal experience to his conversation with Ellison. "As an investor and also as someone who was a caregiver to a patient survivor, three-time cancer survivor, I feel deeply committed," Chiang shared. This dual perspective gives Chiang a unique lens through which to view the innovation landscape. "One thing that sets us apart at Flare Capital Partners is in addition to being a financial investor, we also partner with many of the strategic investors—many of the health systems, health plans, and other key players that are advancing the mission of delivering better care." Chiang described Flare's role as "conduit and connectors" in the ecosystem—bringing together capital, innovators, and the organizations delivering care and conducting research. His passion became particularly evident when he spoke about the urgency of this work: "The faster we can push the innovation, the more lives we can save. That's what motivates us to be able to contribute to this phenomenal ecosystem and be a champion of the program."
The conversations revealed how CancerX serves different but complementary needs across the healthcare landscape. Kevin Platé, Vice President of the Southeastern Region at Atrium Health Levine Cancer—part of the Advocate Health family, highlighted how the accelerator aligns with broader strategic healthcare objectives. "Cancer X aligns with Advocate Health's five-year strategic plan to help us build a national cancer service line across a large health network," he explained. "This partnership can help us reduce variations in care, to ensure patients have access to the most innovative cancer treatments, and to reduce the time from screening to diagnosis to care." Platé's perspective demonstrated how CancerX helps translate innovation into practical implementation that improves system-wide cancer care delivery.
Shannon Bean, CEI Principal at CEI Ventures, rounded out the day's conversations by highlighting how responsible investment can drive meaningful innovation. "From an investor lens, it's important that investors are investing socially, responsibly, and really understanding where their money's going and what impact that's going to have on the next generation," Bean reflected. "In this case, it's cancer. It's curing cancer and it's helping these patients live longer and better, healthier lives." She spoke of the importance of evidence—the data, computational models, and methodologies that underpin promising technologies. In a field sometimes driven by hope and excitement, Bean's measured approach emphasized sustainability and verifiable results. What makes CancerX particularly valuable from her perspective is the convergence of diverse stakeholders: "All the healthcare stakeholders are right here in the same room at Cancer X, and that's extremely invaluable."
Throughout the interviews, a common thread emerged among these four champions despite their diverse backgrounds and roles. Whether motivated by institutional collaboration like Peng, personal experience like Chiang, strategic implementation like Platé, or responsible investment like Bean, each champion shares a vision of innovation as a catalyst for progress against cancer. They see CancerX not just as an accelerator program, but as a vital ecosystem where startups can understand the value they bring to each stakeholder and how to align their innovations with the needs of the entire cancer care landscape.
"One day we can truly prevent as many cancer patients from having to go through many of the hardships and then make their journey easier," Chiang had said, capturing the ultimate promise of their shared work. Through the CancerX accelerator's exclusive mentor network, its targeted programming, and its commitment to matching startups with leading healthcare organizations and investors, these four champions are helping forge pathways for innovative solutions to reach patients faster, make care more personalized and effective, and smooth the journey from diagnosis to treatment.
In the aftermath of Moffitt Innovation Day, as participants returned to their respective organizations across the country, the impact of these conversations continued to ripple outward. At the center of this expanding network stands the CancerX accelerator—a catalyst for the kind of collaborative innovation that builds the future of cancer care, one connection, one breakthrough at a time.
While these four key champions offer compelling insights into the power of the CancerX ecosystem, they represent just a portion of the program's diverse champion network. In the coming months, we look forward to sharing more perspectives from the remaining champions—each bringing their unique expertise and vision to this collaborative effort to transform cancer care through innovation.
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