Brad Power
Founder and CEO, Cancer Patient Lab
We are a patient-led non-profit helping patients and their caregivers navigate the complexities of cancer care through education, access to cutting-edge treatment options through our network of service providers, and a caring community offering insights to guide you through your journey.
Patient and Caregiver Story: Phil and Noel
Phil has been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, and his wife Noel is heavily involved in his care. They are navigating Phil’s treatment decisions together and are very grateful for the information and community provided by the Cancer Patient Lab. Phil had an unusually good response to a new targeted radiation treatment (Pluvicto), but it eventually failed, and he has just been accepted to a new clinical trial. They traveled to Omaha, Nebraska, to access the trial with a more promising radioactive isotope (Actinium-225) and an outstanding oncologist (Dr. Luke Norquist).
Noel: “I love this group. We cheer and pray for each and every one of our members! We have benefited immensely by being members of CPL.”
For a short video interview with Noel and Phil, please see this link on our YouTube channel.
2024 was a busy year for our team, which as you probably know, is entirely run by volunteers. A few highlights from the past year include:
Growing our community from 109 to 330 members. We now have members in 45 countries
Growing our social media presence to 466 followers on LinkedIn and 522 subscribers on YouTube.
Expanding the Cancer Patient Lab governing board from three members to seven, including the addition of a new Board Chair, Kay Coleman
Improving the user experience on our website and community platforms – which saw over 2,500 visitors from over 70 countries
We could not have done this without the support of our marketing team – Joce, Debbie, Kevin and our co-founder Brian McCloskey. We are adding new team members for 2025, and will introduce some of those to you in the coming months.
We also delivered 48 learning sessions in 2024, and although it’s difficult to pick favorites, we would like to recommend three of our most popular sessions in case you missed them. You can find all of our session summaries in the Learning Session section of the community.
A Patient Uses Novel Testing Services to Guide His Treatment with Brad Power – This session explores how patients and caregivers can push for extra tests to identify new treatment options and help with decisions on selecting among treatment options.
Watch Session
Identifying the Most Effective Treatment on the Tumor Rather than Trying It Out on the Patient with Dr Chris Apfel – An introduction to functional testing — deciding if drugs at various concentrations and drug combinations will be effective by applying them to fresh tumor tissue.
Watch Session
We have big plans for 2025, and we’d like to share concepts for new solutions that will benefit cancer patients and caregivers. We are extremely grateful to Sherri Dorfman for her patient journey work, which helped us to identify three key areas where we could offer value to people living with advanced cancer:
- Patient Needs Assessment – This easy to use tool will help cancer patients process their diagnosis and prioritize areas where they may need support by helping them define their values, needs and goals as well as ongoing needs around mental health, financial and practical support. The output of this assessment is something patients can also take to appointments to discuss with their care team.
- Interactive Cancer Patient Journey – A roadmap of possibilities, this interactive journey tool will help people diagnosed with advanced cancer understand their disease journey and different treatment pathways available to them at different stages of the journey. Each step will have clickable sections where patients can access information, tools and resources to support decision making.
- Personalized Cancer Services Guide – This builds on the work we’ve already done in developing a guide of diagnostic and treatment services for advanced cancer patients, Designed by cancer patients, the Guide will be organized into 20 categories including physical health (e.g. testing, treatment) and mental and emotional health (e.g. care and end of life support, cancer community support), which can be filtered based on cancer type, stage, journey stage, geography and other factors.
We are actively seeking grant funding to help us deliver these solutions. If you are able to support our work through a donation, or by volunteering your time to validate and help test the solutions, let us know!
Thank you for your continued support, and may 2025 be filled with good health, good friends, and good times.
The Cancer Patient Lab team
ACCEPTS VIRTUAL CLIENTS
[email protected]
617 818 5983
Boston, Massachusetts
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