August 11, 2025
3 min watch
Arcascope uses the circadian clock to optimize cancer therapy, noted CEO Olivia Walch.
Key takeaways:
- Arcascope utilizes sleep and circadian rhythm to identify the best time of day for cancer therapy.
- The company was one of 14 startups selected for the 2025 CancerX Accelerator cohort.
Arcascope — a circadian health company — is leveraging its combination of AI, mathematical models and wearable devices to assess how a patient’s body changes throughout the day, and determine when cancer therapy will be most effective.
“We’re harnessing how the body changes over the course of the day to do a better job of developing medicine,” Olivia Walch, PhD, the company’s founder and CEO, told Healio. “A lot of cancer therapies are given without consideration of what time of day they will work best — we find drugs that failed because they were given at the wrong time, and then we ‘rescue them’ for patients with cancer.”
She added: “Today, oncologists would use this product along with their patients to help figure out the best time for them to take a drug. In the future, we see this as [something] not just for oncology, but an across the board in medicine platform for helping people take control of timing in their body. A lot of people think we can’t track somebody’s circadian clock without doing an expensive, invasive test. We’ve shown that’s not true.”
Arcascope was one of just 14 startups selected for the 2025 CancerX Accelerator cohort, a group of innovative digital health and artificial intelligence startups focused on addressing critical challenges in oncology. The program is hosted by Moffitt Cancer Center and launched in collaboration with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health.
The CancerX Accelerator program provides participating startups with access to industry champions, experienced mentors and a wide range of support, from product feedback and pilot opportunities to potential commercial agreements.
“We have proven that [Arcascope] is very accurate in multiple peer reviewed papers, and we can leverage it to help people figure out the right time for their drug for them,” Walch said. “We wanted to be part of CancerX Accelerator to get in touch with the key stakeholders in oncology and since joining CancerX, we have started some really exciting collaborations.”
In this video, Walch explains the key reasons why she wanted to participate in the CancerX Accelerator, the collaborations it has already provided to her and the company, and her advice for the 2026 CancerX Accelerator cohort.
As the official media partner of the CancerX 2025 Accelerator cohort, Healio will showcase key breakthroughs and achievements through exclusive interviews with this year’s startups as well as alumni groups from the 2024 program.
Applications for the 2026 CancerX Accelerator cohort will open Sept. 2, 2025, exclusively for CancerX members, with public applications opening Sept. 9, 2025. Join the CancerX community here.
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Olivia Walch, PhD, can be reached on LinkedIn here.