The People Behind The Products: Madeline Naylor

By Darcy Grabenstein, Content & Thought Leadership Director, Citeline

For patients and caregivers navigating a cancer diagnosis, the gap between standard-of-care treatment and available clinical trial options can feel impossible to close—even for those with deep healthcare experience. This interview with Citeline's Chief Clinician explores how a personal loss to esophageal cancer shapes her work building real-world data assets that connect patients with appropriate trials. Drawing on 74 billion data points and billions of de-identified clinical notes, her team uses a "human in the loop" approach—pairing AI and natural language processing with clinical review—to translate unstructured EMR data into actionable trial-matching insights for sponsors and sites.

This conversation highlights the persistent challenge in oncology of physicians defaulting to familiar standard-of-care pathways simply because trial awareness hasn't reached them, leaving patients to advocate for themselves without knowing what to ask for. As trial protocols grow more complex and site burden increases, screen-fail rates and enrollment timelines suffer. This piece offers a window into how integrating real-world data and clinically validated AI can close the awareness gap—helping more patients find the right trial faster before time runs out.