Start-up aims to harness the natural powers of cancer survivors to cure this life-threatening disease
Cure51 raises a €15 million seed round
Cure51, a techbio company seeking to unlock the biological mechanisms responsible for exceptional survivors among cancer patients, announced that it has successfully raised €15 million in a seed funding round led by Sofinnova Partners. Other investors included: Hitachi Ventures GmbH, Life Extension Ventures, Xavier Niel, and Olivier Pomel, CEO, and co-founder of Datadog.
The funding received will enable Cure51 to build a unique cohort, exploring the molecular processes by which certain cancer patients survive for very extended periods of time despite having highly aggressive forms of the disease. The company seeks to unlock these mechanisms to enable every patient to become an exceptional survivor with new insights for precision medicine and drug target discovery. Key to this endeavor are the new analytical techniques and the strong partnership the company has forged with leading oncology centers worldwide.
"This funding marks a pivotal moment in Cure51's journey, but more importantly, in the path towards curing cancer," says Nicolas Wolikow, Co-founder, and Chief Executive Officer of Cure51. "With this support, we are on our way to unlocking survival mechanisms and ultimately, saving countless lives,” adds Simon Istolainen, Cure51 Co-founder and Chief Strategy and Scientific Network Officer.
"Looking at ‘mechanisms of exceptional survival’ is not a new concept, but Cure51 has taken this to a whole new level in terms of the scale of the endeavor plus leveraging the latest in analytical techniques," said Simon Turner, Partner at Sofinnova Partners. "Cure51's strong clinical network and ambitious team make this an investment we’re thrilled to support."
“Modern AI models require world class datasets to uncover novel biology and discover transformative medicines, and this is what Cure51 is uniquely creating for cancer patients,” notes Joanna Soroka, PhD, Principal at Hitachi Ventures GmbH.
Cure51 was founded in March 2022 by Nicolas Wolikow and Simon Istolainen, with input and support from Okwin co-founder Thomas Clozel, alongside seasoned entrepreneurs and five world-renowned oncology centers: Gustave Roussy Institute (IGR, Paris - France), Leon Bérard Center (CLB, Lyon - France), Charité Universitätsmedizin (Berlin - Germany), Milan - Italy), the Instituto Europeo di Oncologia (IEO - Milan, Italy) and Vall d'Hebron (VHIO, Barcelona - Spain). The aim is to pioneer the creation of the world's first global clinical and molecular database of cancer survivors, by rewriting the narrative of cancer. Rather than focusing on the disease mechanisms, Cure51 studies outliers – those individuals who defy statistics and miraculously survive the most aggressive forms of cancer, including metastatic stage pancreatic cancer and glioblastoma.
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