The idea for Stella came to me after a frustrating and then surprisingly hopeful experience navigating ClinicalTrials.gov last year. I had just learned that I have high Lp(a) — a form of cholesterol that, unlike LDL, can't be lowered by statins or diet. My initial reaction was something close to despair. No medicine existed to treat it. Or so I thought.
After some digging on ClinicalTrials.gov and asking AI to translate the medical jargon into something I could actually understand, I discovered that there are multiple Lp(a)-lowering drugs in the later stages of clinical trials — drugs that may come to market within the next few years. That shift, from feeling stuck to feeling hopeful, happened because I found the right information. It just took way too much work to get there.
That experience felt like a window into something bigger. We're living in a moment where people are more curious about their health than ever, and where medical breakthroughs — accelerated by new technologies — feel genuinely within reach. Clinical trials are where those breakthroughs happen first. But the way trial information is presented today, dense with jargon and buried in government databases, keeps most people from ever knowing what's available to them.
Stella exists to change that. It's a resource for anyone trying to make sense of the clinical trial landscape — to find trials that might matter to them or someone they love, and to follow the progress of those trials as they move toward completion and the results are published. It's a work in progress, and it's built for you.