Wolf&Grayson EditorialGlobal cancer deaths reach nearly 10 million each year. Despite extraordinary scientific progress, many breakthroughs struggle to translate into meaningful change because of funding, implementation, and adoption barriers that slow or stall even the most promising ideas. “We have enormous amounts of innovation coming from thousands of people, but we have limited real world impact,” says Frederic Scheer, CEO and Founder of the AI-powered diagnostics company ALERCELL. It is a reality he sees most clearly in oncology, where rising cancer incidence highlights a troubling divide between what science makes possible and the care patients actually receive. For more than two decades, he has worked across biotechnology and diagnostics with a mission to turn complex science into practical tools that matter for human lives.
Progress has been uneven. New technologies continue to advance, yet cancer fatalities keep rising, and younger patients now face diagnoses once considered rare for their age. This tension fuels Scheer’s work at ALERCELL, where he is focused on redefining how leukemia and lung cancer are detected by identifying early epigenetic signals and analyzing extensive datasets that reveal disease long before traditional methods can.
Why Innovation Rarely Becomes Impact
Looking back on his own ventures — from pioneering biodegradable materials at Cereplast to building precision oncology tools — Scheer sees three barriers that repeatedly slow innovation. The first is funding. New technologies almost always cost more at first, which can limit adoption. Take early biodegradable plastics, which faced reluctance from buyers focused purely on price. “We live in what I call the Walmart Society. People were not willing to spend the extra dollar to take care of the planet,” he says.
The second barrier is what Scheer calls the clinical gap. Companies may test promising ideas at small scale, only to abandon them because they are inconvenient or expensive. “We try on the small scale and then we see. If it works, we do it. If it is too expensive, we put it in a drawer.” The third, and most important, is the adoption gap. Innovation requires people to change their habits, workflows, and expectations. That shift takes time. “You have that new approach and then you need people to accept it,” he says, noting how new medical procedures, materials, or diagnostic tools often require cultural as well as technological change.
Turning Science into Human-Level Solutions
Scheer is determined to overcome these gaps, and the stakes could not be higher. Cancer causes roughly 600,000 deaths each year in the United States alone, more than one every minute. It’s a crisis comparable in scale to a wartime emergency. Time is the key variable. “Your enemy is time,” he says. “What do we have? It is not money. It is time.” Diagnostics that can identify disease months or years earlier can fundamentally reshape outcomes. This urgency shapes ALERCELL’s research, particularly its work on using methylation patterns and epigenetic changes as predictors of leukemia.
Scheer’s team has analyzed EMR data from over 350,000 patients, using AI to detect pre-leukemic methylation signatures that emerge years before conventional diagnosis. These findings support an emerging model: leukemia may be detectable long before symptoms appear. This would mean earlier, gentler, and more tailored therapeutic options. “We may go into different types of therapeutics,” Scheer says, pointing to treatments that interrupt the methylation process rather than relying on aggressive chemotherapy.
The Next Frontier for Healthcare Innovators
Scheer expects the next decade to reshape healthcare in ways that challenge longstanding assumptions. AI, he believes, will become the primary engine of frontline diagnostics. Simple blood tests will feed into systems capable of scanning a patient’s entire medical history in seconds, identifying disease with unprecedented accuracy. Recent studies show AI outperforming experts in radiology interpretation. “The difference is gigantic,” he says. However, specialists, and the need for them, will not disappear. Their work will be guided by deeper, richer datasets that offer clearer paths to effective treatment. Scheer sees this as a long-awaited accelerant.
A Vision Built on Persistence
Whether shaping early advances in sustainable materials or redefining precision oncology today, Scheer continues to be guided by a core principle: innovation must serve people. It should make life healthier, safer, and more equitable, narrowing the gap between scientific possibility and real human impact. For founders building the next wave of progress, his advice is to focus on solutions that genuinely improve lives, understand the barriers that slow adoption, and build partnerships resilient enough to carry innovations through inevitable setbacks. “You have to work with that time constraint,” he says. “Speed is our ally.”
Readers can connect with Frederic Scheer on LinkedIn or visit his website.
