The Story
At 25, Alessandro was a Harvard grad and cancer researcher with 30+ publications. He had done research in oncology and used single cell multiomics and lineage tracing to understand how cancer evolves in individuals. On a population level, he had examined how socioeconomic factors shape treatment access and outcomes across cancers including breast, prostate, colon, liver, and brain. Alessandro was in Beijing completing a master’s degree on a Schwarzman Scholarship, one of the world’s most competitive fellowships, when he noticed a lump on his body. The cancer had not presented with any symptoms, which is likely why the stage had gone so high: no pain, no discomfort, no odd feelings, simply a lump he routinely noticed in the shower. He went in for an MRI in Beijing and then physicians recommended an emergency surgery.
The next day, Alessandro was on an emergency flight back to the United States for a radical orchiectomy. Pathology confirmed stage 3 cancer with spread to the lymph nodes and lungs. Months later, his tumor markers returned to normal. Doctors believed he had beaten the disease. Alessandro believed it too, and started returning to his normal routine, going back to the things that gave his life its former zeal, such as speaking Chinese or skiing double black diamonds on Colorado slopes. Having experienced difficulty in finding clinical trials that he was suited to, Alessandro was motivated to make that process simple for patients like him. Inspired by his own experience, just after his surgery, Alessandro began building NxtCure.
NxtCure is an AI-powered clinical trial matching platform Alessandro co-founded to help patients find trials they’d otherwise never know existed. Unexpectedly, Alessandro was not only NxtCure’s founder; he also shortly after became its first user. Sending a request for a match through his own app after going through the traditional route of flying across the country to see doctors who said “wait and see” was surreal. Facing this challenging disease, he was now dependent on an app he had never thought he would need to use himself, certainly not in the immediate future. Alessandro used the app to match into a trial at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Through NxtCure, he found a clinical trial that showed he still had active tumor in his body, despite thinking he had previously beaten the disease.
The entire process of the clinical trial was seamless. The relevant trial organizers contacted Alessandro, and he got an appointment in a couple days. A phlebotomist came to his home after that and found that his tumor markers were soaring. Shortly after he got his results, Alessandro was told to start chemotherapy immediately. His exact chemotherapy regimen was BEP (Bleomycin, Cisplatin, and Etoposide). Before his first infusion, surgeons placed a port at the tip of his vena cava, a small but visceral reminder that his body was preparing for chemotherapy. That first day of chemotherapy was among the hardest of his life; he remarked having lacked the energy to stand. In the weeks that followed, he lived with persistent nausea, vomiting, epigastric pain, neutropenia, and the looming fear of nephrotoxicity. The hardest thing about those weeks was not knowing what to do with himself. He struggled to stand, sit or lay down without feeling pain or nausea. Sleepless nights left him drained of all energy. To an outsider, he looked like a lifeless automaton, but internally he was locked in a battle for his life. It was from inside that experience that NxtCure’s mission became undeniable to him.
On the Monday of the first week of chemotherapy, he received an interview invitation from Y-Combinator, arguably the most competitive accelerator in the world, where he would meet with his cofounder in San Francisco to make their $500k pitch to the same people who backed early versions of DoorDash, AirBnB, and OpenAI. Despite having barely enough energy to focus on the now virtual interview, Alessandro knew he had the potential to change the trajectory of NxtCure for patients forever. NxtCure was accepted into the Spring 2026 batch of Y-Combinator.
Today, he is one-third of the way through his chemotherapy and getting better. One of the lung nodules has already disappeared, and he is looking forward to the end of treatment. Alessandro continues to build NxtCure, to bridge the gap in his disease trajectory for other patients. He is also continuing his Schwarzman classes virtually and is on track to graduate mid-June. NxtCure has deferred to participate in the summer batch while Alessandro continues to finish treatment and Alessandro will be heading to San Francisco in the end of June.
If you are a patient, or a caregiver, take ownership of your health today and explore what NxtCure has to offer for you: www.nxtcure.com
