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Cancer rates are rising, especially among younger adults, but most new drug compounds fail to advance through clinical trials. According to French businessman Fanny Jolin (on the right in the photo above), the problem lies in the design of clinical trials.
“Just because a drug didn’t work in clinical trials doesn’t mean it’s not a good drug,” she told TechCrunch. Hence the need for better ways to try new molecules, especially for cancers where innovation has failed to make an impact in recent decades.
Its beginning, Oracle Oncologyis applying artificial intelligence to this problem, but Jolene admits that her team is not the only one doing it. In fact, she believes AI is becoming a bet in drug discovery. That’s not where Oracle’s differentiation lies, she said.
Founded in 2023 as an offshoot of the Gustave Roussy Institute of Oncology, Orakl works at the intersection of data and biology, making it different from companies that do just one or the other, and more similar to Tempus, the health AI technology that went public earlier From this year.
Both aspects are complementary; The data aspect helps deal with the fact that each tumor is unique, while the biological aspect is the best way to take the complexity of the cancer into account, Golin said.
The result is hybrid, with avatars that combine the background of real patients and tissue. Currently, this means working on organic organs, which have been minimized and simplified In the laboratory Versions of organs that can be used for experiments.
As for the data layer, it includes about 40 variables per patient, which compensates for the fact that its set is still smaller compared to its larger competitors, with an initial focus on colorectal and pancreatic cancer.
With this foundation in place, Orakl plans to commercialize two products: O-Predict, which helps customers predict a patient’s response to a drug candidate, and O-Validate, where the process goes in reverse. This makes the former more suitable for drug developers, while the latter could also serve biotech companies that rely on AI and data, Golin said.
These marketing plans will be funded by the just-raised seed round, which comes in addition to the startup’s €3 million seed funding round. Secured in 2023. Led by European venture capital fund Singular, some non-dilutive funding from Bpifrance also follows including the Grand Prix i-Lab, bringing Orakl’s total capital raised to date to approximately €15 million.
While most of the proceeds will go toward building a business team to close contracts, that’s not what made Julen become an entrepreneur. With cancer becoming a chronic disease and the therapeutic arsenal “less than what is at stake,” her long-term goal is to unleash the process of precision medicine discovery “to make as many medicines available to patients as possible.”
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