81
SEARCHING
FOR CURES
NAT TURNER | 33
ZACH WEINBERG | 33
Legions of entrepreneurs
subscribe to Mark Zuckerberg’s
onetime motto, “Move fast and
break things.” Nat Turner, who
in 2012 co-founded Flatiron
Health with college buddy and
business partner Zach Weinberg,
is not among them. “That,”
he says, “doesn’t work in our
world”—the convoluted system
of cancer research, which the
startup is trying to streamline.
But Turner isn’t willing to
sacrifice the time it takes to do
it right. Using de-identified data
plucked from millions of medical
records, Flatiron’s software helps
researchers track which cancer
treatments—at which doses,
delivered at which times—work
for which patients. But even with
all that processing power, “It’s
going to take a while,” Turner
says. The medical community
doesn’t seem to mind. In 2016,
Flatiron partnered with the
Food and Drug Administration
to improve drug research, and
in 2018, pharmaceutical giant
Roche purchased the company for
almost $2 billion.
—Jamie Ducharme
PATRICIA CHANG