Every year, cancer researchers run out of money before they run out of ideas. The early-stage work, the kind that hasn’t yet earned institutional backing, the kind that’s one promising result away from changing everything—quietly disappears. No announcement. No obituary. Just a lab that goes dark, a question that never gets answered, and often a cure that is never found. Scarlett Cohan found that unacceptable. The Los Angeles entrepreneur watched a close family member fight through advanced cancer and its complications, and came away with a question she couldn’t shake: the COVID vaccine was built in under a year. There is no shortage of brilliant, motivated scientists. So why is something as solvable as funding still the thing that keeps them from moving forward? Too many families, she felt, were still facing empty seats—at graduations, at weddings, at the moments that are supposed to be shared—because the research that might have changed the outcome never got off the ground. That struck her as wrong. And fixable. What Is Curefundr? Her answer is Curefundr—what she describes as the first crowdfunding platform in the country, built exclusively for cancer research. Think Kickstarter, but for the scientists working to end the disease. The model is simple: connect donors directly to researchers, cut out every unnecessary intermediary, and let the work move forward. Ninety-five cents of every donated dollar goes straight to the lab—no administrators taking a cut, no 40-page grant applications, no waiting to hit a 100% funding threshold before receiving anything. Donors choose the specific project they want to support and can follow its progress directly. Researchers get paid fast and keep what they raise. What sets Curefundr apart from general crowdfunding is its infrastructure. A board of physician-researchers vets every project before it goes live, and all researchers come from accredited institutions—a credibility layer that platforms like Kickstarter don’t offer and that matters enormously when donors are being asked to fund science, not just a story. The platform covers all 13 major cancer categories, so donors can find work connected to their own experience, and researchers gain visibility across cancer types rather than competing in a vacuum. Why Now? The launch comes at a charged moment. The White House’s FY2027 budget proposes a 12% cut to the NIH, and while the National Cancer Institute is set to receive a modest budget increase, the broader structural changes to federal grantmaking tell a more complicated story. A proposed cap on indirect cost rates and a shift to fully forward-funded grants—without a corresponding funding increase—would, according to the Association for Clinical Oncology, drastically reduce the number of new research projects the agency can support each year. For early-stage researchers trying to get promising work off the ground, that’s not a policy footnote. Curefundr is designed to be the alternative—a way for researchers and donors alike to operate independently of federal funding cycles that are increasingly difficult to predict. This month, the platform will be showcased at the AACR Annual Conference, one of the largest cancer research gatherings in the world, drawing over 20,000 researchers from around the world. It’s a fitting debut for a platform whose entire purpose is to get in front of exactly that room. The Founder Before all of this, Cohan was a classically trained pianist and harpsichordist, a Carnegie Hall performer and winner of national and international competitions. It’s not an obvious path to healthcare entrepreneurship, but it’s a revealing one. That kind of career is built on years of disciplined, unglamorous work toward a result you can’t guarantee. She knows what it takes to commit to a long game. Get Involved Researchers can submit proposals and donors can browse active projects across all 13 cancer categories at curefundr.com. For anyone who has ever sat with that particular kind of loss and wondered what they could actually do about it—this is one answer. The post Cancer Has Beaten Every Researcher Who Ran Out of Money. Curefundr Is Changing That. appeared first on LA Weekly. ...read more read less