a first global database of “miracles” will be created by a French start-up to develop drugs

Cure51 will recover the medical records, imaging and biological analyzes of 1,300 patients in the terminal stages of very aggressive cancers. The idea is to identify which specific biological defenses they have activated to help other sufferers.

While oncologists from all over the world have gathered since Friday May 31 at the Chicago Cancer Congress to discuss the most innovative treatments, in France, a start-up supported by the Unicancer network, wants to unlock the secret of patients who survive very aggressive cancers while they are in the terminal stage of the disease. Cure51 will recover all the data from these “miracles”.

What is the recipe for these exceptional survivors? There are tens of thousands of them around the world who are surviving even though they are suffering from one of the most aggressive pancreatic, lung or brain cancers and are in the terminal phase. To find out, a Parisian start-up is building the first global database of its miracle workers. Cure51 will collect the files of 1,300 survivors collected in 45 countries. “We will have all their medical records, their imaging”explains Nicolas Wolikow, CEO of Cure51. “We will also recover all their biological analyzes.”

“And we will also and above all, that’s the big new thing, repatriate the tissues, the cells, the tumors that we will sequence.”

Nicolas Wolikow, CEO of Cure51

at franceinfo

“We are going to do molecular profiling to understand the mechanisms of interactions between these cells and their environment,” develops Nicolas Wolikow.

The goal is to make drugs for all those who do not survive these very aggressive cancers. “We know that these patients survived, insists Nicolas Wolikow. So we know that they inevitably have very specific biological defense mechanisms. We will try to identify them and turn them into drugs that benefit all patients.”

“It’s like a big funnel: you analyze these 1,300 patients, you identify the common points and then you sift them to try to identify the lowest common denominator that will allow you to develop drugs.”

Nicolas Wolikow

at franceinfo

To achieve this, the oncologist who supervises the project will in some way copy the responses of the cells of these exceptional survivors. “Either the patients, who have very prolonged survival, activate pathways which make them respond much better to treatments, for example, pathways linked to the activation of the immune system, et in this case, it will be necessary to activate the immune system highway, advances Doctor Olivia Le Saux from the Léon Bérard center in Lyon. “Or, on the contrary, patients who have exceptional responses do not activate a particular pathway which is involved in resistance to treatment and in this case, it will have to be inhibited.”

To process all this information, researchers will use cutting-edge technologies and artificial intelligence, in particular to compare the data of survivors with those of deceased patients, who had nevertheless benefited from the same treatment in the same hospital and for the same type of cancer.