We know that there are a lot of patients out there who have just heard that they have cancer, and, understandably, they are going through the worst phase of their life after hearing the news, and this can happen to anyone. However, there is now a company that has just raised a seed round of $15M to crack the code of the reasoning and patterns behind how a cancer patient survives even after hearing about their diagnosis and what keeps them going.
Cure51 says that they raised the money and will now build a “cohort” of data and understand why some patients survive for as long as they do, even after having some of the most severe types of cancer. It is worth noting that, as the company also acknowledges, there is no shortage of oncology databases, and there are lots of them. Still, there is no database yet that keeps track of oncology survivors. This is where Cure51 comes into the picture with its unique composition, a very positive and uplifting thought for anyone going through the darkest phase of their life.
“There are plenty of companies licensing oncology databases, but their databases don’t include survivors. They don’t present such a granularity of multi-omics data (single cell and spatial), and they lack ethnic diversity”, says Nicolas Wolikow, co-founder of Cure51. He also adds that companies like Flat Iron (Roche), Market Scan (IBM) and Iqvia offer “simple databases with clinical data and sparse genomic data.” But molecular databases “at multi-omics levels are required for drug discovery,”
Simon Turner, the partner at Sofinnova Partners, says, “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.” As you might be aware, Google now owns Fitbit. They recently announced “a tool that will help Fitbit users get insights from their devices and a partnership to improve screenings for cancer and disease in India.”
