Orakl takes on four Sanofi cancer assets
French techbio Orakl Oncology has secured exclusive rights to four undisclosed oncology assets from Sanofi, giving the startup an opportunity to test whether its combination of patient-derived tumour models and artificial intelligence can improve drug development decisions.
Why it matters: The agreements give Orakl a potentially important pharmaceutical validation project for O-Predict, its system for forecasting clinical response and helping drug developers choose patient groups, combinations and trial strategies.
Zoom in: Orakl signed two agreements with Sanofi covering the four assets but did not disclose the targets, modalities or cancer indications involved, the development stage of the four programmes, the financial terms or the precise scope of its exclusive rights.
How it works: Orakl’s platform combines a clinical prognosis score – based on factors such as performance status, molecular profile and treatment history – with drug-response data from patient-derived colorectal and pancreatic cancer organoids. It then matches organoids to the target trial population and predicts progression-free survival and response rates for each treatment arm.
Yes, but: Orakl’s reported accuracy of up to 90% comes from a recent preprint and has not yet shown that the platform can improve the success rate of prospectively developed drugs. The four Sanofi programmes will therefore be an important real-world test of whether the company’s predictions can translate into better development outcomes.
Backstory: Orakl was created in 2023 as a spinout from French cancer centre Gustave Roussy by researchers Fanny Jaulin, Diane-Laure Pagès and Gustave Ronteix. Its original technology was built around “tumour avatars” combining patient-derived biological models with matched clinical data.
- The Paris-based company raised €3 million later that year from Speedinvest, HCVC and Verve Ventures to build its laboratory and data capabilities.
- It followed with an €11 million seed round led by Singular in December 2024 to commercialise O-Predict and its experimental validation product, O-Validate.
The bottom line: Orakl now has to show that its platform can do more than generate promising predictions. The Sanofi assets give it a chance to prove that predictive biology can guide what happens to actual drug programmes.
