Medical breakthroughs often come from unexpected places, and sometimes the most important innovations happen when brilliant minds decide to tackle problems that have stumped researchers for decades. Cancer detection represents one of healthcare’s greatest challenges, with traditional methods often catching the disease too late for optimal treatment outcomes. Frederic Scheer, CEO and co-founder of ALERCELL, has spent the last five years developing technology that could fundamentally change how we detect and treat cancer, particularly leukemia.
Understanding the Urgency
Frederic doesn’t sugarcoat the numbers. “Every 50 seconds somebody is dying from cancer in our country,” he says. That’s just in the United States. Worldwide, we’re talking about “15 million people dying all over the world” every year. The worst part? Most of these deaths could be prevented if we caught the disease early enough.
Here’s what really gets to him: we know early detection works. “Early detection dramatically increases survival rates,” he explains. Take leukemia, which ALERCELL specializes in. “Detecting the disease at a molecular level before clinical symptoms appear can lead to remission rates above 90%.” When you catch it that early, patients don’t need chemotherapy or those brutal treatments that destroy your body along with the cancer. So why aren’t we doing this already? Simple answer: we don’t have the right tools. “Most cancers, including leukemia and non-small cell lung cancer, are often diagnosed late due to a lack of routine screening tools,” Frederic points out. The technology just wasn’t there. Until now.
Creating Early Detection Tools
What ALERCELL does sounds complicated, but the idea is actually pretty straightforward. They’re building “smart technology that helps find cancer much earlier than usual, even before symptoms show up or genetic changes take hold.” Think of it like a smoke detector for your body, except instead of waiting for the fire to start, it smells the match being lit. The secret sauce involves something called DNA methylation. Frederic breaks it down: “DNA methylation is like a dimmer switch for your genes. It helps turn them up or down without changing the actual DNA.” When cancer starts forming, these switches get flipped in predictable patterns. ALERCELL’s technology reads those patterns before anything else notices.
Decoding Cancer with LENA
The really interesting part is what Frederic calls the LENA code. His team knows that “about 210 genes are associated with leukemia.” So they’re building a system that maps exactly what happens when those genes start going wrong. “We are creating a code that will allow us to map all those movements and understand when that process is starting, at what speed it’s evolving.” It’s like having a GPS for cancer development. The technology tracks disease progression across multiple biological layers, “mapping the speed at which the illness and the disease is developing and how it’s developing.” Once they finish this work in “probably two to three years,” they’ll understand the disease better than anyone ever has.
Lowering Costs and Expanding Access
Here’s where Frederic’s vision gets interesting. Most medical breakthroughs stay locked up in expensive hospitals or research centers. Not this one. “When we will have that code, we’ll give it access to everyone,” he promises. His reasoning is simple: “Public health means that everybody needs to have access to that.” The business model backs up the promise. ALERCELL is targeting “costs below $500 per patient, which clearly is a fraction of the current cost of diagnosing leukemia.” That price point means doctors in small towns can access the same technology as major cancer centers. The Deep Leukemic Cloud platform will work anywhere there’s an internet connection.
He wants people to stop thinking about cancer as an automatic death sentence. “Cancer is not a death sentence. If we catch it early, we can manage it,” he insists. The goal isn’t just better treatment, it’s prevention through early detection. His vision is ambitious but simple: make early cancer detection so accessible and affordable that “the overall landscape of dying in the next 50 seconds will disappear.” It’s the kind of goal that sounds impossible until someone actually does it. The work continues at ALERCELL, one gene at a time, one patient at a time. Cancer might be winning right now, but Frederic thinks that’s about to change.
Connect with Frederic Scheer on LinkedIn to follow his mission of transforming cancer detection.
