GOLDEN THREAD
Pediatric cancer

Some cures already exist. More are being developed. Every child should be able to reach them all.

Where connections become cures

Too often, the treatments that could save a child's life don't reach the family who needs them. The treatments still being researched are blocked by the same broken system — trials that stay confined to a few specialty centers (far from where most children live), operational overhead that takes years off the research timeline, outdated rules and red tape that were never designed for modern pediatric cancer care. Golden Thread will change that.

See what we're changing Our 10-year bet
15,000 Children diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States.
13 states have just 1 Children's Oncology Group institution. 2 have none at all.
392mi One-way drive a family in Montana faces to reach the nearest pediatric cancer specialty center.
3in 4 Children with cancer who never enroll in a clinical trial.
The frame shift
01

The biggest gap isn't science. It's the system around it.

Treatments that work already exist. Better ones are still being researched. Today, too many children reach neither — because the connections that should get treatments to children haven't been built.

02

Borders block care. Cost blocks trials. Silos block scale.

The obstacles are structural, not scientific. State-line rules, investigational drug fees, and disconnected data systems are solvable problems. We treat them that way.

03

We build the system that gets treatment to every child.

Golden Thread is built to break the barriers. Modern policy, strategic matchmaking across silos, and AI that takes on the administrative load. All three, at once.

Our mission

Remove the barriers that stand between a child with cancer and the care that could save their life.

Barrier 01

Outdated policies.

Rules written before telemedicine, modern drug delivery, and the way trials actually run today still govern pediatric cancer care.

Barrier 02

Disconnected players.

Hospitals, researchers, policy makers, and technology partners moving in parallel, rarely together.

Barrier 03

Administrative load.

The work behind every patient — and every trial — takes hours, costs dollars, and delays care.

What success looks like

Seamless care.

The specialist, the trial, and the treatment — without the wait, the cost, or the distance getting in the way.

  • The specialist sees the child in Cheyenne, in Bozeman, in any zip code.
  • The clinical trial runs at the local hospital, not only at a major academic center.
  • The trial drugs a child needs are available at a reasonable price.
  • Clinicians spend more time at the bedside, less time on paperwork.
Three pillars

How we dismantle what stands in the way.

Each pillar takes aim at a different barrier. Together, they compound: policy opens the door, partnerships carry the load, technology makes it scale.

Pillar 01

Modern policy.

Rewrite the rules that were written before telemedicine, shared data, and modern drug delivery existed.

We write the white papers and convene the policy makers who can unlock interstate pediatric cancer care. Our first initiative targets the interstate licensure barriers that keep sub-specialists from reaching the children who need them.

The wall we're tearing down

A pediatric oncologist in Nevada cannot treat a child across the California line, even by video. State laws drafted decades ago now block the care they were meant to protect.

How far do families travel? Click any city to see distance to its nearest Children's Oncology Group center
Pillar 02

Strategic matchmaking.

Connect the people who don't yet know they need each other.

We broker the right relationships that unlock better care for more children. Golden Thread doesn't run clinical trials, and we aren't going to become a vendor. We know the pediatric cancer field — the consortia, the hospitals, and the partners whose tools could close the gaps. So we broker the match. When a partnership works for one small consortium, we extend it to the others.

The gap we're closing

Pediatric cancer lives in silos. Hospitals, researchers, policy makers, and technology partners all move in parallel. They rarely move together. We sit at the intersection and fix that.

Golden Thread as the connector across networks
Pillar 03

Modern infrastructure.

Built around AI today, expandable to anything that takes on the operational load tomorrow.

Not research AI. Administrative AI — for now. The kind that brings the trial to the patient, not the patient to the trial.

The hardest parts of delivering modern pediatric cancer care aren't clinical. They're operational. A clinical research coordinator can't be staffed at every hospital that could host a trial. The paperwork behind a pediatric cancer drug approval takes hours a physician doesn't have. Chart review, adverse event grading, dose-modification documentation — these are the time-intensive workflows where AI tools are starting to work under physician oversight.

Golden Thread brings the clinical governance, the physician voice, and the pilot partners. Our partners bring the tools. We work on the workflows most worth disrupting. Our first focus is clinical trial conduct, because that's where the access gap is largest and where the right tech partners are ready to work.

The bottleneck we're unlocking

The hardest part of opening a trial isn't the science. It's the infrastructure to run it — most of which is still manual. That cost is what slows pediatric cancer research.

Clinical research coordinator workflow, reinvented Design target · rollout 2026 to 2028
Today, done by hand
1hrThe research coordinator opens the patient chart and reads through it
1hrCopies every lab value into the trial database
1hrRe-reads the trial protocol to check dosing rules
1hrPhysician reviews
1hrUpdates medication orders, re-verifies
1hrFiles any side effects, by hand
1hrLogs everything for the next monitor visit
6 to 8 hours of staff time per visit
With Modern Infrastructure
5minAI pulls labs and imaging straight from the hospital's medical record system
5minA protocol-aware assistant surfaces dose rules and side-effect references for clinician review in plain language
15minThe physician reviews and signs off, over telehealth if needed
—Copying labs into a database
—Manually updating medication orders
—Filing side effects by hand
—Logging for the next monitor visit
Under 30 minutes per visit
Who we are

Who we are.

Three things to know about Golden Thread: who built it, what it actually does, and what it deliberately is not. Each shapes the work in ways the others can't.

Built by practicing physicians

Two pediatric oncologists. The same frustration.

Golden Thread exists because two practicing pediatric oncologists kept filling the same holes — so they decided to build a better boat.

Ashley Margol, MD, MS
Co-founder · Pediatric Oncologist
Cassie Kline, MD, MAS
Co-founder · Pediatric Oncologist

The founders are practicing pediatric oncologists and clinical researchers. They have spent years caring for children at major academic referral centers — and felt the limits of a model that leaves too many children out. They built Golden Thread to change that.

More about us & our board →

Why us.

Advantage 01

We sit inside the ecosystem.

Drs. Margol and Kline have direct relationships with the people who shape pediatric cancer care in the US. Hospitals, researchers, regulators, technology partners. That network is not a directory. It's a working coalition, moving in weeks instead of years.

What this unlocks Brokered partnerships built on long-standing trust.
Advantage 02

We are physicians on the front line.

Both founders still treat children with cancer. Every policy argument, every technology build, every partnership term gets run through the clinical reality of a Wednesday morning clinic, not an annual report.

What this unlocks Policy that reaches the child it was written for. Clinical governance the tech partners build around. Trust from physicians who recognize the work because we're still doing it.
Advantage 03

We treat the underlying problems, not only the symptoms.

We work the rules, workflows, and partnerships to make sure investments reach a child. Three pillars. Each one a specific barrier we intend to dismantle and rebuild with intention.

What this unlocks Durable change. The kind that doesn't unravel.

What Golden Thread is, and isn't.

Golden Thread isn't a family foundation, a research grant-maker, or a patient-advocacy group — though we get confused for all three. We are a physician-led nonprofit built and run by board-certified pediatric oncologists. We don't fund research; we build the connections that carry research to the child. We don't speak for families; we work alongside the clinicians, hospitals, and policy makers whose decisions affect them.

Recent wins

We are already moving.

Golden Thread is months old as a 501(c)(3), years old as a body of work. Here is where momentum already lives.

April 2026

First draft of the interstate licensure white paper completed.

A standalone policy paper laying out the legal and regulatory friction that stops pediatric oncologists from treating children across state lines, and the case for a federal fix. First draft circulated to other clinicians, advocacy groups and policy makers for review.

Pillar 01 Policy
February 2026

Cost Plus Drugs and Rx Save Card partnerships established.

Two infrastructure partnerships are in place. Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs is helping to supply low-cost off-patent drugs directly to patients enrolled in trials. Rx Save Card lets the trial — not the patient — cover the cost. Together they replace the investigational-drug pharmacy overhead that drives up the cost of clinical trials.

Pillar 02 Matchmaking
November 2025

Founding physician advisory board established.

A founding group of practicing pediatric oncologists from academic hospitals and clinical trials consortia, telling us where the friction actually hits in clinical care and research — so we know what to fix next.

Cross-pillar Coalition
Upcoming event

Threads of Hope

September 15, 2026  ·  Washington, DC

An evening for Golden Thread's founding supporters, partners, and friends — bringing together the people building the future of pediatric cancer care.

Learn more →
Make a Donation

Every dollar funds a named outcome.

Each campaign below has a specific deliverable, a timeline, and a goal. Back the work you want to see happen.

Pillar 01 · Policy

Interstate Pediatric Cancer Care

Funds the policy research, legislator briefings, strategic communications, and focused federal advocacy behind the first federal bill to remove barriers that stop pediatric oncologists from treating children across state lines.

What your gift supports
$50Helps sponsor a policy briefing on interstate care
$250Underwrites a half-day convening of cross-sector partners to align advocacy strategy
$1,000Funds a Capitol Hill advocacy day, including travel and materials for one team member
$2,500Funds a Capitol Hill advocacy day, including travel and materials for the full team
Back this campaign →
Pillar 02 · Drug pathway

Clinical Trial Drug Pathway

Funds the operational infrastructure that lets pediatric cancer trials ship investigational drugs through Cost Plus Drugs — workflow design, financial-technology integration, and the labor of standing the pathway up for trial consortia. The trials pay for the drugs themselves; this campaign funds the pathway.

What your gift supports
$50Helps fund the research that maps drug access barriers across pediatric cancer trials
$250Supports participation in one industry roundtable to streamline drug access coordination
$1,000Funds one strategy session with a pediatric cancer consortium to design drug access pathways
$2,500Funds drug shipment fees so patients can receive trial medicine at home
Back this campaign →
Pillar 03 · Modern infrastructure

Modern Infrastructure Scoping

Funds the exploratory work that comes before the build — identifying which operational bottlenecks tech partners can address, evaluating potential collaborators, and standing up the clinical advisory structure that will govern any future pilot. This campaign funds the scoping phase, not a deliverable.

What your gift supports
$50Helps fund the research that maps where AI tools could help most
$250Funds clinician interviews at one trial site to identify operational pain points
$1,000Sponsors one cross-sector working group session with researchers, data scientists, and technology partners
$2,500Funds a policy consultation to address regulatory barriers in pediatric oncology technology adoption
Back this campaign →
Support Golden Thread's Mission A general gift supports the work across all three pillars.
Donate here →
If you'd like to make a larger gift, contact us to start the conversation.
Contact us →

Gifts directed to a specific campaign are applied to that work as priorities allow. Golden Thread reserves the right to allocate funds across operations to deliver on our mission.

The 10-year bet

By 2036, where a child lives no longer determines whether they survive.

The specialist, the clinical trial, and the treatment travel to the patient, not the other way around. Pediatric cancer is the right place to prove it. Small enough to pilot. Urgent enough to matter. Structured enough that if we solve it here, the blueprint works everywhere.

Why this scales

15,000 children a year is just the starting line.

Pediatric cancer is small enough to be solvable and specific enough to be fundable. But the work itself was never going to stop at this population. Every change Golden Thread wins extends by design.

Chronic, complex care broadly
All rare pediatric disease
All pediatric care in access deserts
15K Pediatric cancer, year one
Tier 01

Pediatric cancer.

15,000 children a year, a concentrated problem with a defined population, visible clinical trials, and a known set of players to align.

Tier 02

All pediatric care in access deserts.

The interstate licensure fix, the investigational drug pathway, and the modern infrastructure we build for cancer all apply directly to pediatric cardiology, neurology, and any specialist-scarce field. Same rails, more riders.

Tier 03

All rare pediatric disease.

Rare disease shares cancer's economics: too few patients per site for traditional trial design, too much paperwork per patient. The Golden Thread matchmaking model and modernized trial infrastructure generalize without redesign.

Tier 04

Chronic and complex care more broadly.

Every federal bill we help pass on interstate pediatric specialist care becomes the blueprint for the next fight: adult rare disease, complex transplant care, mental health access. The legislative playbook is transferable by design.