{"slug": "bay-area-mans-cancer-journey-inspires-clinical-trial-tool-created-by-two-high", "title": "Bay Area man’s cancer journey inspires clinical trial tool created by two high school students", "summary": "Two high school students, Jaya Breene and Cooper Marr, created Trialify, an app that simplifies clinical trial searches for cancer patients, inspired by Thaddeus Reichley's struggle to find trials for his stage 4 metastatic melanoma. The app aggregates data from clinicaltrials.gov to help patients identify potential trials and discuss them with their doctors.", "body_md": "**Getting your**\n\n[Trinity Audio](//trinityaudio.ai)player ready...Thaddeus Reichley has had a lot of ups and downs in his cancer journey since being diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic melanoma — originating from the pleural cavity surrounding his right lung — in 2023. Having a type of cancer that doesn’t typically respond well to chemo or radiation, the Sleepy Hollow resident had to focus on immunotherapy and targeted therapies, which he didn’t have much luck with. As he began looking for clinical trials, even with years of knowledge behind him at this point, the scientific jargon made it hard for him to decipher what he might qualify for.\n\n“I was getting really frustrated with trying to figure out what was available, what was close enough to home and deciphering the language,” he said. “I was very well educated at that point on my disease, the different DNA markers that I had and the different aspects of my specific cancer. And still I had a really hard time looking at these clinical trials.\n\n“You can’t always tell exactly what the time frame is, how many people they might be accepting per month and all these things that really make a difference when every week and month counts for a lot when you’re in that sort of life-and-death situation.”\n\nIt’s a problem he discussed over coffee last year with former Marin resident Ken Kurtzig, who Reichley first connected with years ago when they were both involved with Mark Day School in San Rafael. Reichley is the former head of kindergarten through fourth grade at the school, and Kurtzig, whose kids went there, served on the school’s board of trustees.\n\n“I left Mark Day School three years ago to pursue other things in education, and shortly thereafter I got my cancer diagnosis, and he and I have remained in touch,” said Reichley, who was at Mark Day School for 11 years.\n\n“I have since published a children’s book, and he was working with Mark Day School to publish a children’s book. I started advising and doing some editing work with him on that. So we met fairly regularly over the course of a year.”\n\nAt one of their meetings, Kurtzig asked how he was doing and told him about how he was helping some teens develop an app.\n\nThe veteran tech entrepreneur has helped other teens in the past through his Impact App Challenge, an entrepreneurship program that empowers high school students to develop and launch social or environmental applications.\n\n“I asked him what they were developing, and he said they didn’t know yet. They were still in the brainstorming stages. And I said to him, ‘I’m actually having a frustration right now myself around finding clinical trials, and if they wanted something with a real-world, immediate impact, I think this could be something that could be very interesting for them to pursue.’ And next thing you knew, I was talking to the kids about it and advising them.”\n\nThis spring, the Branson School junior Jaya Breene and Truckee High School sophomore Cooper Marr have made Reichley’s dream a reality with Trialify, an application that makes it easier for patients to see what clinical trials they may qualify for. It features information aggregated from [clinicaltrials.gov, a National Institutes of Health site, ](http://clinicaltrials.gov)that the patient can then bring to their doctors.\n\nThe teens didn’t know each other until they started working on this project a few months ago. While they had both taken computer science classes, this was their first time creating an application like this.\n\n“My dad works in this space; he’s been in oncology. That was the driver for me. It seemed like a really good way to bring this cancer research into the hands of patients in the real world,” said Marr, who connected with Kurtzig originally through his grandfather.\n\nFor Breene, it’s a mission that he connected with immediately as well.\n\n“I am passionate about it because cancer has been something that runs in my family,” he said. “Both my grandparents unfortunately died because of cancer. Clinical trials are a means to find cures or just update and make advancements on the already existing treatments. So this was definitely something that I wanted to build.”\n\nReichley is currently in a trial. While he found it through his medical team, he feels confident about how helpful Trialify can be for others. Patients are oftentimes having to look for trials on their own, he said.\n\n“They were very impressive. I was really amazed with what they came up with in such a short period of time. I was also really impressed that they were willing to take on something like this that might not necessarily impact their world, but that they were willing to look and see that this is something that could really be a benefit to a lot of people. I thought that was a pretty mature thing for them to take on something like this,” Reichley said.\n\nMore information at [trialify.org](http://trialify.org).", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/bay-area-mans-cancer-journey-inspires-clinical-trial-tool-created-by-two-high", "canonical_source": "https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/06/16/marin-residents-cancer-journey-inspires-clinical-trial-tool/", "published_at": "2026-06-16 11:04:41+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-16 11:21:39.189204+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools", "developer-tools"], "entities": ["Thaddeus Reichley", "Ken Kurtzig", "Jaya Breene", "Cooper Marr", "Branson School", "Truckee High School", "Mark Day School", "clinicaltrials.gov"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/bay-area-mans-cancer-journey-inspires-clinical-trial-tool-created-by-two-high", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/bay-area-mans-cancer-journey-inspires-clinical-trial-tool-created-by-two-high.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/bay-area-mans-cancer-journey-inspires-clinical-trial-tool-created-by-two-high.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/bay-area-mans-cancer-journey-inspires-clinical-trial-tool-created-by-two-high.jsonld"}}