Laura Kleiman
“It's just so important to build that community, because look, we're all going through the same things, we're all figuring out solutions to the same problems of building companies. We might be working on completely different problems, but it’s so important to learn from one another." —Laura Kleiman
Laura Kleiman (@LauraKleiman) is the Founder and CEO of Reboot Rx (@rebootrx), a nonprofit tech startup fast-tracking the development of affordable cancer treatments using repurposed generic drugs and AI technology.
Laura’s career has focused on building collaborations across disciplines and sectors to expand treatment options for cancer patients. She was previously Scientific Research Director in the Department of Data Sciences at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Laura earned a PhD in Computational and Systems Biology from MIT and conducted translational cancer research as an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Laura was recently featured in Forbes and received the 40 Under 40 in Cancer Award.
Reboot Rx is a tech nonprofit startup led by cancer researchers, data scientists, and business professionals trained at MIT, Stanford, and Harvard Medical School.
They have received awards from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Fast Forward, Google.org, MassChallenge, The Greater Sum Foundation, New England Innovation Awards, and MassBio.
Just a quick note that this episode was recorded at the end of 2020. Since then, Reboot Rx has made a lot of exciting progress and has generated an initial ranked list of drug repurposing opportunities using their technology.
Please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Laura Kleiman (@LauraKleiman) and Founded By Women host, Margie Chuang (@margiechuang)!
Subscribe to the show & listen to Episode #006 on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can find the transcript for Episode #006 here (coming soon!). Transcripts for all episodes can be found here.
Show Notes
Who inspired Laura to dive into science, math and computation? [2:11]
Applying math to the cancer research space [3:15]
Laura’s journey through MIT’s first class of systems biology for PhD students [4:42]
The origin story of Reboot Rx [6:50]
The gaps in funding cancer research [8:28]
Laura breaks down the multiple stages of drug development [10:07]
Reboot Rx & repurposing non-cancer generic drugs for cancer treatment [11:40]
Becoming a tech non-profit and the challengers of fast tracking the development of new and affordable cancer treatments [13:03]
What is a repurposed generic drug? [14:45]
Impacting the standard of care [19:34]
Reboot Rx’s AI technology, part 1 [21:17]
Examples of non-cancer generic drugs that were successfully repurposed for cancer [22:07]
Reboot COVID-Cancer Project [23:28]
The phenomenal experience of collaborating with interns [27:00]
Building a non-profit organization [29:50]
How do you get people to believe in your idea? [32:28]
Creating and cultivating Reboot Rx’s diverse and inclusive team [33:49]
How Laura met her co-founders [35:42]
The most surprising things about being a startup founder and entrepreneur [38:02]
Laura’s journey of overcoming entrepreneurial obstacles [38:50]
Accelerators and how Laura prepares for speaking engagements and pitches [41:19]
Building communities and learning from one another [44:41]
Keeping motivated [45:25]
What worked and what didn’t work? [47:12]
Work-life optimization [48:26]
What’s next for Reboot Rx? [50:15]
Rapid Fire Questions [51:25]
What have other women said or done to empower you? [53:30]
Parting thoughts and encouraging words [53:38]
What was your favorite takeaway or quote from this episode? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below!
Selected Links from the Episode
Connect with Laura Kleiman:
Reboot Rx:
MIT | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2020 was an extraordinary year for Reboot Rx | by Laura Kleiman
Away | Netflix
This Entrepreneur Is Using AI To Bring Affordable Treatments To Cancer Patients | by Shannon Farley
Subscribe to the show & listen to Episode #006 on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Notable Quotes— with Laura Kleiman
“Create a vision for the world you want to live in and believe that you can make that change. And then work really hard to make it happen.”
“It’s just so important to build that community, because look, we’re all going through the same things, we’re all figuring out solutions to the same problems of building companies. We might be working on completely different problems, but it’s so important to learn from one another.”
“I’m wedded to the problem, but not the solution.”
“When people come in with new ideas, better ways to approach this problem, and come up with new solutions— I’m totally open to it. That’s fantastic.”
“When you get those opportunities, go for it. Don’t hold back.”
“At Reboot Rx, we think that there are potentially life saving cancer treatments that already exist in the form of these repurposed non-cancer generic drugs. And we’re on a mission to fast track the development of these new and affordable cancer treatments.”
“Reboot Rx’s goal is to get these new treatments into the standard of care for cancer, so that cancer patients around the world are just offered the treatment as their routine medical care.”
“There are more than 250 non-cancer generic drugs that hold promise for cancer. And we can be combining them in different ways, using them for different types of cancers. So, how do we prioritize all of the potential repurposing opportunities? And we realized that this is actually a data challenge that we need to solve first — this is when we actually became a tech nonprofit, because we realized we had to build technology. And that now there’s an opportunity to do this in a more systematic way, using AI and machine learning, to synthesize the data on these drugs and systematically prioritize where there’s the strongest evidence and which drugs could have the greatest impact on the lives of cancer patients.”