Louis Chênevert is a retired business leader who served as CEO of United Technologies Corporation (UTC), the multinational conglomerate specializing in aerospace and building systems, from 2008 to 2014. He is also a former president of Pratt & Whitney and spent nearly 15 years in leadership roles at General Motors. In retirement, he leverages his success in business to fund critical education and healthcare initiatives through a private family fund, the Chênevert Family Foundation.
A survivor of stage 4 central nervous system (CNS) lymphoma, Chênevert is the chairman of the Director’s Advisory Board at Yale Cancer Center, where he received life-saving treatment. His foundation also furnished a substantial donation to Yale to launch the Chênevert Family Brain Tumor Center. More recently, the foundation gifted funds to the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, continuing a philanthropic partnership that has spawned innovation in bladder cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Bladder Cancer Types and Treatments
The 10th leading cause of cancer death in the US, bladder cancer disproportionately affects men; the American Cancer Society estimates that about 65,000 men and 20,000 women will be diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2026. Smoking is the biggest risk factor, while others include exposure to chemicals and chronic bladder inflammation. Tumors that form on the bladder can cause symptoms such as frequent urination, a weak urine stream, or hematuria (blood in the urine). If malignant, these tumors can spread and cause additional health complications throughout the body.
There are five different types of bladder cancer: urothelial carcinoma, small cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, sarcoma, and adenocarcinoma. A urologist can diagnose the type and growth pattern of the tumor through diagnostic tests like urine cytology and urinalysis, imaging tests (CT, MRI, and IVP), and cystoscopy. Treatment options include surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy, determined by the size and type of the tumor, stage of the cancer, and patient's medical history.
Moffitt's New Liquid Biopsy Test
The Chênevert Family Foundation’s donation to the Moffitt Cancer Center has helped support non-invasive detection techniques for bladder cancer. Dr. Roger Li and his team were able to create a urine-based circulating tumor DNA (utDNA) test, a type of liquid biopsy, that can detect minute traces of disease in the bladder. This is critical for detecting recurrence in patients with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC).
Traditionally, NMIBC patients require invasive cystoscopies every few months to assess the status of the disease. These procedures can be incredibly uncomfortable as a thin tube, with a light and tiny video camera attachment, is inserted through the urethra and into the bladder. Moffitt's utDNA test is less burdensome and more cost-effective for patients. It has also been proven more effective in detecting recurrence in early studies.
In one study, the utDNA test identified 97.8 percent of patients with residual cancer, in some cases outperforming surgical methods. The test achieved 100 percent accuracy in a validation cohort.
AI IGNITE
Chênevert Family Foundation funding for Moffitt has also helped advance a first-of-its-kind AI-powered platform known as AI IGNITE. This dynamic, multimodal AI system informs patient treatment via real-time data such as imaging and clinical records as well as genomic information from tissue and urine samples. It evolves alongside a patient's disease course to assess individual risk and monitor response to specific treatments.
Dr. Li is leading the AI IGNITE project team with support from internationally recognized AI expert Dr. Issam El Naqa. The team is working to validate the platform's predictive power against existing surveillance methods using retrospective data and a prospective cohort of NMIBC patients, collecting tissue, blood, and urine samples throughout their disease journey.
Moffitt is a national leader in AI healthcare adoption. It launched one of the first cancer center-based machine learning departments in the US and has already demonstrated AI efficacy in detecting breast cancer and improving treatment decisions for non-small cell lung cancer, among other types.
"Moffitt's ongoing investment in the curation of data from the electronic health record and development of machine learning algorithms is a cornerstone for the advancement of precision oncology and improved cancer patient outcomes in the future," noted Moffitt’s Dr. Dana Rollison in 2024.
Ongoing Work at Moffitt
With support from the Chênevert Family Foundation and other donors, Moffitt intends to accelerate AI-powered cancer care and the development of personalized, curative therapies for bladder cancer. Specifically, it intends to advance development of AI IGNITE, acquire an NVIDIA next-generation AI computing platform, and invest in specialized teams of AI scientists, data engineers, and clinical researchers to create, validate, and scale predictive models.
The goal for AI IGNITE is to boost collection and analysis of tumor samples from bladder cancer patients whose diseases progress from non-muscle invasive to muscle-invasive. An NVIDIA superchip system, meanwhile, will improve processing power, allowing the cancer center to scale its AI-driven research, ensuring it remains at the forefront of precision oncology.
