REGION — Rick Stanton, co-founder of a nonprofit dedicated to finding personalized treatment options for long-term cancer patients, passed away in late June after a battle with advanced prostate cancer.
He was 69.
Stanton, originally from Thousand Oaks, had been fighting cancer since his early 20s when he beat testicular cancer. He was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in January 2020.
His lifelong battle with cancer inspired him to help start the Cancer Patient Lab in March 2022. The nonprofit works directly with advanced prostate, brain, and pancreatic cancer patients and their caregivers to find the best individual treatment options.
Stanton’s friends and family described him as an intelligent and steadfast individual, fueled daily by his long-term goal to find a cure for cancer.
“He was a loving, charismatic, brilliant, caring, funny, kind, and thoughtful man,” said Stanton’s daughter, Christy. “He had an adventurous spirit and excitement for life that inspired everyone around him.”
Stanton received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from California State University-Northridge, where he met his wife and worked as a bioinformatics scientist for many years. Throughout his career, Stanton worked for genome sequencing and biotechnology companies like J. Craig Venter Institute, Human Longevity and Amgen.
“He’s always been passionate about curing cancer because he got it at such a young age,” said Stanton’s wife, Linda Stanton. “I think that he would have been the same person, but it inspired him to live every day to the fullest and not waste it.”
Christy mentioned that her father loved to surf, play hockey, practice carpentry, ski down Mammoth Mountain, and play the guitar. Stanton was the guitarist for a band called “The Knuckleheads,” which once opened for the B-52s at The Belly Up in Solana Beach.
“I think that’s really what helped him get through a lot of the hard times in his cancer journey, was just playing music, and that was definitely one of his top passions,” Linda said.
Shortly after Stanton’s diagnosis, Christy helped her dad start a software company called Stanton Biosciences that matched cancer patients with the next best therapy in their cancer treatment process. She said the two pitched their software to the developing Cancer Patient Lab, which is when Stanton first got involved in helping start the company.
Brian McCloskey, a co-founder and COO of Cancer Patient Lab, said the nonprofit, which is still operational under the management of McCloskey and CEO and co-founder Brad Power, hosts weekly online speaker events, offers a network of service providers who help patients explore and access different treatment options catered to them specifically, and provides a collaborative platform where patients can ask questions and share research with each other.
McCloskey, who was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in 2016, said the nonprofit’s goal is to guide advanced cancer patients to find treatment options that fit their needs. For some patients, McCloskey said standard medical care for long-term cancer patients is not always the best option, and CPL helps people find what treatment option is best for them.
According to McCloskey, CPL is funded entirely through donations and is nearly entirely volunteer-based. The group’s leadership wants to hire a paid executive director and expand the board as the company grows. Currently, the nonprofit is available in 20 countries and has more than 200 members.
“The three of them (Stanton, McCloskey, Power) have had cancer or were battling cancer at one point in time and wanted to enable the cancer journey to be more streamlined and easy, especially for people who didn’t have a PhD in biology,” Christy said, referring to CPL’s founders. “For the average person to be able to navigate their own cancer experience, it’s very difficult.”
McCloskey said Stanton, the nonprofit’s chief information officer with a background in bioinformatics, brought unique skills to the company and helped patients by walking through complex diagnostic reports with them.
“He would help them interpret the report and add another layer of insight that just wouldn’t be offered in the report itself because they’re sort of cookie-cutter — many of them are,” McCloskey said. “And so he would offer, sort of, that personalized support to our patients.”
McCloskey said he was disappointed he never had the chance to surf with Stanton, who surfed his last waves in Del Mar just a few months before his passing. He would often log onto the company’s Zoom calls to find Stanton with his guitar on his lap, strumming a Pink Floyd song.
“If he felt like it, he’d just break out a solo when he felt like he needed to,” McCloskey said.
McCloskey added that Stanton, wanting to keep McCloskey sharp, would often quiz him on his genomics knowledge. He said Stanton was a central force in building the community aspect of CPL.
“He was always positive and encouraging to our patients and helped to build the camaraderie of our community,” McCloskey said in an announcement of Stanton’s passing. “He was a leading influence in building our culture. We will sorely miss Rick.”
Stanton is survived by his wife, Linda, and his two children, Christy and Eric.
