AI Tools Help Patients Navigate Complex Cancer Information

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly integrated into cancer care, many patients are looking for tools that can help them navigate complex treatment decisions and feel more informed. Steve Brown, founder and CEO of CureWise, who is also a patient living with multiple myeloma, created his AI-powered platform after facing his own rare blood cancer diagnosis. What began as a personal project has evolved into a resource designed to help patients organize genomic information, identify relevant clinical trials, and participate more confidently in shared decision-making.

In a recent conversation with CURE, Steve was joined by Lisa Booth, a HER2-low metastatic breast cancer patient who has spent more than a decade navigating treatment options and clinical trials.

CURE: You’ve lived with metastatic breast cancer for over a decade and have adapted your approach through genomic profiling, clinical trials, and AI. Can you describe what led you to turn to AI at this stage in your treatment?

Booth: Oh, I wish I had been around in 2015. I am unique in that I was diagnosed metastatic from day one. I found out I had cancer on a Monday, on Tuesday they thought it might be on my liver, and by Wednesday, I was diagnosed metastatic. Welcome to 46; it was my husband's birthday. He turned 46 that day. My son had just turned seven, and genomic testing wasn't even part of standard care for metastatic patients at that point in time.

The very first clinical trial I ever did was one recommended by my oncologist, who said, "Hey, we got this new thing. The facility is sponsoring it. I think we should do this." By happenstance, I ended up with a rare form of cancer with a known mutation, which is a HER2 activating mutation, making it function like a HER2 cancer. You would work with Herceptin (trastuzumab) and similar drugs on it, but none of those drugs were available to me because I didn't have a high enough expression of HER2, but my cancer was very aggressive.

Those first eight weeks, you just do what your oncologist says because it's overwhelming. You go from not being a patient to sitting in the chemo chair, going bald, arranging carpools. People are bringing casseroles, giving you socks and things like that. It's a lot. I remember googling this activating HER2 mutation, and Dr. Google said, "Death sentence." I was like, "Okay, that's very helpful," right? It really rattled me. I was treated as an early-stage patient because I was young and had very limited disease, something called oligometastatic, so I just did what my oncologist said. Once I got through chemotherapy, the liver ablation, mastectomy, and radiation, I was like, "Okay, now I’m waiting for the shoe to drop," and that's when I started looking at clinical trials in depth.

Initially, I relied on my oncologist team. I had a primary oncologist and a consulting oncologist at Fred Hutch. I got into a breast cancer vaccine study where they were seeing some really good progress. Unfortunately for me, my cancer came back after getting the vaccine, and my oncologist gave me my first clinical trial. I did that at Stanford, and that was really when I took over and said, "I need to figure this out. I need to be on this page. I need to know what's happening and have some control." Back then, there was only clinicaltrials.org. I had been working for a biotech and had a girlfriend who explained how my cancer worked chemically, how it was driven. We would sit at my coffee table and spend about two hours a month going through all the breast cancer studies (there were about 1,600 of them) eliminating the ones that didn’t make sense and identifying the ones I qualified for. I had a spreadsheet, and that’s how you did things back then.

Over time, some sites improved. Breastcancer.org created a metastatic trial search, which was extremely helpful, but I still had to do all my independent research. I remember sitting with Steve, a friend since we were kids, at the lake. I always laugh and tell Steve our entire relationship was within 40 square feet because we always meet at the lake. I said, "You’re into AI, and I need this thing called a clinical trial search." I remember writing down to him and his brother, who both do AI: I needed to take my genomics, match it against the clinical trials database, pull out the ones I qualified for, eliminate the ones I didn’t because they just stressed me out, and help me find the research so I could understand if it was a good fit. That way, I could get a shortlist and then talk to my oncologist about it.

Most people assume their oncologist has all the time in the world to do research, but oncologists have hundreds of patients in their caseloads. Whether community oncologists or breast cancer specialists like mine, they cannot keep up with everything. By being a partner and having shared decision-making with my oncologist, I moved forward. Thanks to what Steve has built, the last time I recurred in June was a wildly different experience. I could input my genomics, and it suggested clinical trials on different drugs, which happened to align with what I collected over the years. What made it different was that I could ask for objective response rates and a force ranking of the drugs from his perspective, then discuss it with my oncologist. It worked out that what my oncologist thought was best and what Steve’s tool suggested were the same.

I even used it further: I wanted a drug not available in a clinical trial until the end of July, and it was June. Nobody wants their cancer to grow for two months, but I thought it was the right drug. I could work with the tool to see my risk profile over the next two months and assess a monitoring plan. When I discussed it with my oncologist, we decided it was a good plan, waiting until my platelets were high enough for the trial. The tool gave me ideas on getting more sleep, what foods to eat, what supplements to take. When that wasn’t enough, I asked about drugs to consider… I was able to verify with the trial and get my platelets up to entry level. It has been my right hand, and I’ve just been amazed at the difference it has made.

Understanding how CureWise influenced your own research is so valuable. When patients turn to Google, they’re immediately faced with statistics, and they often want more than numbers, they want to know what those numbers mean for them. It’s really encouraging to hear how this supported you.

One of the things I really like about the tool is that when you go to Dr. Google, it just tells you, "You’ve got three years to live," and shows you the objective response rates. What I love about how the tool talks back to me is that it reminds me, "You’ve been an exceptional responder on HER2 and these types of things. Remember, it’s statistics, but you are a use case of one." It really does some of the things you get when talking to your oncologist and helps calm you down.

I think the thing most of us face when looking at progression is the fear of the unknown: What if it doesn’t work? What if the side effects are too bad? The tool offers a nice, calming interaction. It doesn’t replace the need to be with your oncologist (we are partners with our oncologist), but it really helps me as a patient.

I’ve heard so many stories of people finding out their diagnosis through MyChart and thinking, ‘What does this mean?’ They then have to wait until their next appointment to find out, so I’m sure this really helped ease those kinds of nerves.

Yeah, my neighbor, who happens to have metastatic breast cancer as well, sent me a text: "Lisa, I got my biopsy results back, and this is what I got from my oncologist: You have a PIK3CA mutation. This is good news. It explains why your treatments aren’t working. We’ll talk at the next appointment." That’s a perfectly appropriate thing for an oncologist to add on top of a pathology report. But as the patient, you’re like, "Well, what does all that mean?"

We met up, grabbed a glass of wine, and put her information into CureWise. It did the nicest thing of explaining it. Her mutation is like: if you’re driving along the road and the gas is down and you want to take your foot off the gas, there’s a blocker that prevents the gas pedal from coming off, and there are drugs that remove the blocker. I was like, "Oh," and we could understand that as human beings.

It really calmed her down and gave her the information she needed. Then we could move on to other questions, like, "Okay, what are some of the things I keep taking and how does this work?" It was really, really helpful and very calming for her. She was able to wait the next week or two before seeing her oncologist.

Transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

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