A cancer video game grew into a two-decade experiment in how technology, research and money can serve young minds.
In 2001, a video game enthusiast who happened to have worked in an immunology lab had an idea that sounds, on paper, slightly ridiculous. What if a video game - the kind where you shoot things - could help a teenager with cancer stick to a brutal chemotherapy schedule? The enthusiast was Pam Omidyar, whose husband Pierre had founded eBay, and the idea became Re-Mission, a third-person shooter in which players pilot a nanobot named Roxxi through the body, blasting cancer cells and managing side effects along the way.
Here is the part that matters for anyone who thinks about how institutions behave. Re-Mission was not a stunt. Hopelab ran it through a randomized controlled trial - the same kind of study you would use to test a drug - and published the results in the journal Pediatrics in 2008. Young players who used the game stuck to their treatment better and knew more about their disease. The game eventually reached more than 200,000 people across 81 countries.
A tidy ending would have Hopelab making Re-Mission 2, cashing the goodwill, and calling it a career. Instead the organization did the un-tidy thing. It kept mutating. Game studio became research lab. Research lab added an impact-investing arm. The one thing that never moved was the audience: young people, and specifically the ones the health system tends to overlook - Black, Brown, Queer, and Medicaid-covered kids between the ages of 10 and 25.
Which is a useful way to understand what Hopelab actually is. It is a 501(c)(3) private operating foundation, part of the Omidyar Group, funded by Pam and Pierre Omidyar. That structure means it does not answer to the quarterly math that governs a startup. It can take a decade to be right. And it has spent that latitude on a single, stubborn question: how do you build things young people will actually use, for problems that don't fit neatly inside a clinic?
Most health tech is designed for adults and handed down to teenagers. Hopelab reorders the chart in a few specific, unglamorous ways.
At its companies, young people help create, design and develop the products - not as focus-group subjects at the end, but as partners at the start. If teens won't use it, it doesn't ship.
Nearly every founder Hopelab backs has personal experience with the challenges their users face. It treats lived experience as product insight, not a diversity line item.
From the 2008 Pediatrics trial onward, Hopelab measures. Its investing thesis is that rigorous impact data can attract more capital to youth mental health.
As an operating foundation, it can invest from Seed to Series A and wait. No quarterly earnings call decides whether a bet on a teen-focused startup gets to mature.
Its focus is explicit: BIPOC and LGBTQ+ young people, and those on Medicaid - the users traditional models routinely leave out.
Game, chatbot, research grant, artist residency, venture check. The form changes to fit the problem instead of the other way around.
A rough timeline of an organization that refused to stay one thing.
Pam Omidyar launches Hopelab in San Francisco to test whether technology could help young people fight illness.
The cancer-fighting video game launches and begins its spread to more than 200,000 players across 81 countries.
A randomized controlled trial in Pediatrics shows Re-Mission improved treatment adherence and cancer knowledge.
A collection of free online and mobile games extends the concept, with a mobile app distributed via a CIGNA partnership.
Laws becomes President & CEO, steering Hopelab toward behavioral-science products for teen and young-adult well-being.
The impact-investing arm scales up, deploying $12M+ across ~20 startups focused on youth mental health and equity.
Jaspal Sandhu, Ph.D. becomes President & CEO; Margaret Laws moves to an Executive-in-Residence role after a decade.
Hopelab is not a single app you download. It is a set of ways it puts research, design and money to work.
Backs early-stage (Seed to Series A) startups improving adolescent mental health, prioritizing BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and Medicaid-covered youth.
Behavioral-science and health-equity research on digital well-being and newer topics like financial strain and youth debt.
The video games that started it all, helping young cancer patients stick to treatment and feel a sense of control.
Nod helps college students build connection and fight loneliness; Vivibot is a chatbot supporting young cancer survivors.
Including the HBCU Translational Science Fellowship, Young Innovators in Behavioral Health, and Early Career Research Grants.
Narrative-change and arts programming, plus a Responsible Technology Youth Power Fund, round out the work.
A selection of the startups Hopelab Ventures has backed - built for the young people the system tends to skip.
Figures individual companies have reported across the portfolio. Directional, self-reported, and worth reading as encouraging rather than definitive.
Pam Omidyar founded Hopelab in 2001 and remains a board member. She was, before all this, a researcher in an immunology lab and an avid gamer - the two facts that collided to make Re-Mission.
Margaret Laws led the organization as President & CEO for roughly a decade starting in 2015, having previously built the Health Innovation Fund at the California Health Care Foundation. In January 2026 she stepped into an Executive-in-Residence role.
Jaspal Sandhu, Ph.D. became President & CEO effective January 2026, after three years as Executive Vice President. He brings a background in design innovation, social entrepreneurship and health equity.
Research and product development have been led by Dr. Jana Haritatos. The organization is funded by Pam and Pierre Omidyar and sits within the Omidyar Group as a private operating foundation.
employees, roughly, across research, design and investing.
+ deployed through Hopelab Ventures across ~20 companies.
the age band it serves, adolescence through young adulthood.
the year it began, in San Francisco.
Hopelab exists because someone wondered whether a video game could help kids fight cancer - and then actually tested the hunch in a clinical trial.
Its first product was a literal third-person shooter, where players blasted cancer cells from inside the body.
It is funded by Pam and Pierre Omidyar - the eBay founder - and lives inside the Omidyar Group.
It has reinvented itself several times, from game studio to research lab to investor, while keeping the exact same audience.
Video searches to see Hopelab's work and leaders in their own words.