Millions Raised for the Development of Precision Oncology Platform

Orakl Oncology—a precision oncology start-up spun out of the Gustave Roussy Institute in France—has fundraised €3 million (US$3.2 million) to develop its techbio platform, which enables the identification of relevant targets and accelerate delivery of oncology drugs.

Within oncology, a major hurdle to overcome is getting drug candidates to patients sooner in the development process. Currently, the late delivery of drug candidates to cancer patients leads to a 96% failure rate in clinical trials and missed treatment options, the company reported in an Oct. 4, 2023 press release.

Additionally, as each tumor is different, it is important for future cancer treatments to be developed with this uniqueness in mind. Therefore, Orakl Oncology has built unique tumor avatars through the combination of cell biology, engineering, and machine learning that have the capability of mimicking real-life responses to drugs. The company’s collection of avatars, which is growing, will provide a population-scale view of the complexity and heterogeneity of cancer, which will, in turn, help pharma and biotech companies achieve clinical trial success.

“Our ambition is to become a world-leading techbio platform leveraging the smartest collection of tumor avatars to transform oncology drug development and bring faster, smarter, and more cost-effective treatments to patients,” said Dr. Fanny Jaulin, Orakl Oncology CEO and co-founder, in the press release. “We are delighted with the result of this oversubscribed fundraising round, and we are very grateful to all our investors for their support.”

“We are very proud of Gustave-Roussy’s spin-out, Orakl Oncology,” added Prof. Fabrice Barlesi, general director of Gustave Roussy, in the press release. “They [Orakl Oncology] aim to disrupt precision oncology by leveraging major academic and pharma partnerships to accelerate drug development, ultimately leading to better patient outcomes.”

Source: Orakl Oncology