About The Clearity Foundation

Who We Are

The Clearity Foundation is a group of scientists, physicians and volunteers who feel passionately about changing the paradigm for ovarian cancer treatment in hope of providing more cures today. The founder, Dr. Laura Shawver was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2006 and learned first-hand that treatment options are extremely limited. After her chemotherapy treatment ended in 2007, she established The Clearity Foundation along with a small group of friends and colleagues who are on a quest to apply the knowledge of the genetic signature of ovarian cancers to improve treatment options for patients.

What We Do

The Clearity Foundation is a translational medicine and public service foundation focused on:
• Providing doctors access to molecular profiling for their ovarian cancer patients
• Providing doctors and patients clinical trial options informed by individual tumor biology
• Providing access to novel therapeutics in a clinical trial setting
• Ultimately changing the paradigm for ovarian cancer treatment

The Clearity Foundation will provide the financial support for the profiling work if you are unable or it is not covered by your insurance.

About Our Founder

Laura K. Shawver, Ph.D. is a biotechnology entrepreneur with 25 years of scientific experience. Her primary focus is in cancer research and drug development. Currently, Dr. Shawver an Executive-in-Residence at 5AM Ventures, a venture capital firm dedicated to building and actively creating value in early-stage life science companies. Most recently, she as Chief Executive Officer of Phenomix Corp, a company developing drugs in areas of unmet medical needs including diabetes and HCV infection. Prior to joining Phenomix, she was President of SUGEN, Inc which was focused on identifying molecular pathways of cancer cells. The emphasis on kinases and their role in cancer led to the development of Sutent™ for the treatment of kidney cancer and gastrointestinal tumors as well as Palladia™ for the treatment of mast cell tumors in dogs. In addition, Dr. Shawver serves as an advisor to the biotech industry in the area of drug development. Her research career has focused on oncogenes, growth factors and signal transduction pathways. She has published a number of research articles and book chapters in scientific journals. Dr. Shawver is Deputy Editor of “Molecular Cancer Therapeutics” and serves on the editorial boards of “Clinical Cancer Research”, “Angiogenesis” and "Current Signal Transduction Therapy". She is an active member in the American Association for Cancer Research currently serving on the Science Policy and Legislative Affairs committee and on the Scientific Advisory Committee for Hollywood’s Stand Up 2 Cancer campaign.