MSK opens up its cancer data through OpenEvidence. Which healthcare and biotech entrepreneurs made the Forbes 400 for the first time. Persistent generic cancer drug shortages. These stories and more in this week’s InnovationRx newsletter. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.
OpenEvidence’s Daniel Nadler (left) and Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Dr. Anaeze Offodile
Nadler by MAURICIO CANDELA FOR FORBES; Offodile by GETTY IMAGES FOR TIME
Memorial Sloan Kettering knows a lot about cancer. The New York-based oncology hospital is sitting on a treasure trove of data, based on years of study of genetic variants of different cancers and their potential treatments. Now MSK is opening up that gold mine of information to physicians nationwide through a partnership with OpenEvidence, the $12 billion (valuation) clinical tool that’s used by the majority of doctors in the U.S.
The number of innovative cancer treatments has exploded over the past decade, but figuring out which one a patient will best respond to is complex–and cycling through different options takes time that many patients can’t afford to spend. But access to MSK’s data could help cancer care providers make more informed decisions about treatment options based on the molecular specifics of each patient’s disease. OpenEvidence’s AI search tool helps clinicians find answers to their questions with clinically validated information and studies from leading scientific journals. MSK’s database, built up over the past 14 years, will be fully integrated into it.
“It expands MSK’s expertise beyond MSK,” Dr. Anaeze Offodile, MSK’s chief strategy officer, tells Forbes. “We think of this as a distribution mechanism … so people who are treated thousands of miles from MSK can get access to MSK’s precision oncology expertise.”
Today, there are 263 FDA-approved oncology therapies, nearly half of which require biomarker testing to determine if a patient needs the drug, according to Debyani Chakravarty, a molecular biologist at MSK and the lead scientist on its OncoKB database. Yet rural and underserved populations, who are typically seen at community cancer centers by oncologists who don’t have the luxury of specialization, often don’t even receive that testing. The social disparities in cancer treatment are stark. Despite advances in early detection of breast cancer and treatment, for example, Black women face a nearly 40% higher mortality rate from the disease than white women. “We need to get more community practices to adopt precision oncology care,” Chakravarty says.
A potentially even bigger deal: OpenEvidence plans to use the MSK data, in concert with information it gained from an earlier agreement with the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, to work on developing its own pipeline of potential therapies, OpenEvidence founder and CEO Daniel Nadler tells Forbes.
Nadler says that he expects to get a first drug into clinical trials before yearend, and hopes to add an additional three to five potential therapies next year. A big focus to start will be rare cancers. Developing treatments for rare diseases requires locating the handful of patients who might benefit from a clinical trial. Because OpenEvidence is used by so many doctors beyond the leading academic medical centers, it should be able to find them more quickly.
“We are not going to compete with Lilly or Pfizer to do 10,000 patient nation-scale trials. We’re going to go after the stuff that they are not doing, and maybe can’t do, because it doesn’t work with their business model. And we can do it because we have the economies of scale in finding these patients,” Nadler says. He hopes OpenEvidence’s drug discovery work will extend beyond cancer to other rare diseases, as well as to figuring out existing drugs that might be able to be repurposed.
Since Forbes first profiled Nadler and OpenEvidence in July 2025, the competition for AI models in healthcare has only increased. Data–like that from MSK–is an increasingly important differentiator. OpenEvidence’s expanded focus comes as AI has raised the potential for drugs to be discovered faster and more efficiently than ever, even for diseases that had previously been considered “undruggable.” Numerous AI drug discovery firms from Alphabet-founded Isomorphic to VC-backed Chai Discovery are working on the problem, and even AI giant Anthropic announced its launch of an internal drug discovery program.
Like most major health systems, MSK has been exploring how to incorporate AI into its operations. Earlier this year, for example, it became one of eight health systems to launch a pilot of OpenAI’s enterprise-grade healthcare tools, which is ongoing. MSK’s Offodile says that discussions with OpenEvidence began a few months ago after the cancer center realized that some 70% of its faculty was already using the startup’s software. MSK will also integrate OpenEvidence into its electronic health record system, Epic, making it more than an adjunct that doctors consult on their own devices.
While fears about AI’s potential for harm have gripped Americans over the past week, “oncology is probably the most compelling use case within AI for societal benefit,” Offodile says. The complexities of cancer treatment combined with the vast amount of data available (from imaging, pathology, genomic information and the like) make it particularly suited for AI’s capabilities. That could help existing cancer patients, or get potential new therapies through clinical trials faster and more efficiently — like by helping identify patients who qualify for them. “What we are really excited about is what this could lead to,” Offodile says. “This could be the foundation for better clinical trial matching.”
Nadler figures that OpenEvidence’s advantage is that it can pair the data from MSK with the knowledge of the doctors who use its clinical tool–whose visits now number nearly 41 million queries each month. As he says: “The end game of this company is going to look very different than a consumer Internet app.”
The Healthcare Newcomers On the Forbes 400
Colossal Biosciences’ Ben Lamm
Getty Images
It may be the year of AI, but among the 34 newcomers on this year’s Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans, these six first-time listees made their fortunes in healthcare and biotech:
– Cousins Charlie Mills ($11 billion) and Andy Mills ($5.5 billion), and Andy’s sister Wendy Abrams ($4.7 billion) landed on the list from the family medical supplies business Medline. They sold a majority stake to private equity in 2021; the firm went public this year in a much-watched IPO. Today, Medline–which sells 335,000 clinical products, ranging from surgical gowns to blood collection tubes–has a market cap of $43 billion. Charlie, the company’s longtime CEO, remains its chair. (For more on the Mills family, see our December 2025 story.)
– Ben Lamm ($5.7 billion) founded de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences with Harvard geneticist George Church (who is not a billionaire) to bring back the woolly mammoth and dodo. He’s also got a sizable stake in Colossal’s new AI-for-biology spinoff, Astromech. That’s before accounting for Colossal’s reported fundraising at a $20 billion (or higher) valuation. (For more on Ben Lamm, see our February 2025 profile.)
– Keith Dunleavy and family ($4.6 billion) made their riches from Inovalon, a cloud-based healthcare data analytics firm. Dunleavy retired in 2025 after 26 years as the company’s CEO, but still serves on the board.
– August Troendle ($4.4 billion), a medical doctor and one-time FDA medical review officer, started clinical research company Medpace back in 1992. He’s been CEO of the Cincinnati-based company ever since.
These newcomers join longstanding healthcare founders and entrepreneurs on the list, including Epic founder Judy Faulkner ($9.6 billion), the force behind hospitals’ electronic medical records; Bob Duggan ($13.4 billion), the biotech investor and co-CEO of Summit Therapeutics; and Patrick Soon-Shiong ($10.3 billion), who owns a network of health and biotech startups, as well as the Los Angeles Times and a minority stake in the LA Lakers.
With the S&P 500 stock index up 15% for the past year and venture funding for AI companies gone wild, this year’s cutoff for the Forbes 400 reached $4.4 billion, topping last year’s previous record high of $3.8 billion. At least two healthcare founders who made last year’s list no longer clear that bar: Jeff Tangney (now worth $1.5 billion), founder of doctor network Doximity, and David Dean Halbert ($3.4 billion), who first became a billionaire after his diagnostics firm, Caris Life Sciences, went public in June 2025.
Read the full Forbes 400 list here.
Study Finds Persistent Cancer Drug Shortages
Cancer centers across the United States don’t have enough generic cancer medications, according to a new survey by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. All of the cancer centers that responded to the survey said they were in shortage of at least one medication. More than 20% said they lacked five or more treatments. The biggest reported shortages were for the drugs ifosfamide, a generic chemotherapy used for treatment of a variety of cancers, including bladder and ovarian, and carboplatin, a platinum-based chemotherapy used to treat multiple tumor types. NCCN has been measuring cancer drug shortages since 2023.
What We’re Reading
Inside Ohio’s battle to stop bootleg versions of an unapproved weight-loss drug.
BrainChild Bio–a spinout of Seattle Children’s Hospital–raised $116 million to advance its cell therapies for devastating pediatric cancers in clinical trials.
Medicare’s AI prior authorization program was rushed and riddled with problems, according to documents released as part of a lawsuit.
Abbott will pay $385 million to settle claims that it knowingly sold baby formula manufactured at facilities that didn’t meet safety requirements.
ICE lost count of the number of miscarriages among detainees, while holding a record number of pregnant women, according to government documents obtained by The Guardian.
The Pitt star Noah Wyle won the 2026 Emmy award for the second consecutive year for his portrayal of Dr. Robby. The show, beloved by both Hollywood and ER docs, racked up a total of 25 nominations this year.
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