In this week’s edition of InnovationRx, we look at Phil Knight’s big cancer gift, Medallion’s healthcare credentialing clearinghouse, a new treatment for fibromyalgia, and more. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.
Nike Founder Phil Knight
Ethan Pines for Forbes
Nike cofounder Phil Knight and his wife Penny donated $2 billion to Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute, the largest such pledge made to a university. Before this donation, announced last week, the couple had donated $600 million to the institute. Knight, 87, and his family are worth $35.6 billion, by Forbes’ calculations.
The gift will support the institute’s ongoing research into cancer treatments and diagnostics, Brian Druker, who left the institute as CEO in December and will return as president with this gift, told Forbes. The federal government’s cutbacks on research spending are “horrible,” he said, but the infusion of money into the institute, “might allow us to recruit some incredible people.” The Knights’ gift is larger than Michael Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion donation to Johns Hopkins in 2018.
The institute also will focus on improving the care experience for cancer patients, taking the pressure off of them to navigate a labyrinthine system during one of the most challenging times of their lives. “A patient gets a call, somebody tells them ‘You’ve got cancer,’ and then has them make 25 different appointments,” he said. “And they’ve got to battle with their insurance company and they’ve got to talk to their employer about getting some medical leave.”
Druker, a cancer researcher known for developing the drug Gleevac for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia, hopes to take that burden from patients. “You just show up at the appointment. You want a mental health consult? We got that. You want to get some help with nutrition? It’s taken care of. We’ll call your insurance company. We’ll make sure we get the approvals you need. Imagine it being that simple so you could just focus on your care.”
The Institute will spend the next few months working out how to make this kind of care navigation possible, and then roll it out.
Health Startup Medallion Is Rolling Out A National Credentialing Clearinghouse
Medallion’s Derek Lo
Jasmin Kemp Photography
Doctors can only practice medicine in states where they’re licensed. Then each insurer they work with needs to verify their credentials. It’s a messy and time-consuming process that costs more than $1 billion each year.
Medallion’s Derek Lo figures that his software can cut through the system’s redundancies, slashing the time and cost of paperwork designed to prevent quacks from practicing medicine and safeguard patients that’s spiraled into something burdensome. “It doesn’t make sense to credential the same doctor 20 times and do it every three years across all these plans. There should be a single clearinghouse to standardize this,” he told Forbes.
On Monday, the San Francisco-based startup launched a new clearinghouse, which it calls CredAlliance, to do just that, after months of building in stealth. To date, it has signed up a few dozen payers and, Lo said, five of the nation’s 10 largest health plans are considering joining the alliance.
Read more here.
BIOTECH AND PHARMA
Gene therapy startup Kriya Therapeutics raised $313 million from two undisclosed investors, according to an offering document filed with the SEC last Friday. That’s a huge amount in today’s difficult funding environment for biotech. Kriya’s cofounder, chairman and CEO is Dr. Shankar Ramaswamy, who was previously an early employee at Roivant Science and chief business officer at Axovant, one of Roivant’s so-called “vants,” which focused on neurosciences and had a dramatic rise and fall. He is also the brother of Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican politician and billionaire biotech entrepreneur who founded Roivant. The Morrisville, N.C.-based company is working to treat a variety of chronic diseases, including type 1 diabetes and trigeminal neuralgia, a condition that causes constant facial pain. It has now raised a total of $931 million, according to VC database PitchBook. Trade publication BioSpace previously reported the funding.
Plus: Tonix Pharmaceutics gained approval for the first new treatment for fibromyalgia, a disease that affects more than 10 million adults in the U.S., in more than 15 years. Its pill, called Tonyma, is a nonopioid analgesic designed to be absorbed into the bloodstream quickly. Tonix expects to launch the new drug in the fourth quarter.
DIGITAL HEALTH AND AI
Electronic health recordkeeping giant Epic is rolling out new AI tools for medical-care providers and patients. Led by Judy Faulkner, its 82-year-old billionaire founder, the company’s technology is used by more than 3,000 hospitals, more than 71,000 clinics and some 325 million patients worldwide. At its annual users group meeting this week at its Verona, Wisconsin, headquarters, Epic executives said that among the new tools is a virtual assistant called Emmie that can answer patient questions a week before appointments to improve patient education.
Read the whole story here.
MEDTECH
The FDA cleared a new device for the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia, which afflicts around 150,000 people in the U.S. each year with chronic facial pain. The minimally-invasive device from NeuroOne, a publicly traded device company with a market cap of $39 million, uses radiofrequency energy to destroy nerve fibers, interrupting their ability to signal pain to the brain. The company plans to begin selling the OneRF device in the fourth quarter.
PUBLIC HEALTH AND HOSPITALS
A leading pediatrician group said on Tuesday that infants and toddlers, aged 6 months to 23 months, should receive the COVID vaccine. The recommendation by the American Academy of Pediatrics–which has been releasing guidance about vaccinations since the 1930s–stands in contrast to the new federal guidance under HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The group also chose not to participate in June’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices after criticizing Kennedy’s decision to fire all of its existing members and replace them.
WHAT WE’RE READING
A man who relied on ChatGPT’s advice to replace table salt with sodium bromide was hospitalized with hallucinations.
Teenagers with progeria age ultrafast. The New Yorker looks at their lives, and the quest for a cure that could help–and shed light on why we grow old.
Beleaguered gene therapy firm Sarepta sold off Arrowhead Pharmaceutical shares to raise cash.
The single best way to reduce children’s mortality among poverty-stricken families, according to a new decade-long study: Give them $1,000.
How big data and a powerhouse board turned NYU Langone into a $14 billion hospital powerhouse.
Shares of Viking Therapeutics plummeted 42% on Tuesday after the company revealed worse-than-expected clinical trial data for its weight-loss pill.
The FDA approved Precigen’s immunotherapy treatment Papzimeos for patients with a rare disease caused by HPV infection.
A look at the flawed studies used by the father-son duo David and Mark Geier to ‘prove’ vaccines cause autism.
MORE FROM FORBES
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/innovationrx/2025/08/20/innovationrx-phil-knights-2-billion-cancer-gift/
