Orakl Oncology SA raises €3m to advance tumour modelling

French precision oncology start-up Orakl Oncology has raised €3m in a seed  financing round led by Speedinvest with additional investment from HCVC and Verve Ventures. The proceeds will be used to develop the company’s techbio platform that integrates wet lab biology with real-world patient data at scale to accurately model tumours and accelerate oncology drug development.

According to Orakl Oncology, the funding will be used to launch the company’s wet and dry lab capabilities and to hire several key team members, including a Senior Oncology Scientist, Organoid Scientists, a Head of Lab, an Automation Engineer and an AI Research Scientist. This will enable Orakl Oncology to execute its first contracts with pharma and biotech partners.

A major challenge in oncology is that drug candidates meet patients too late in the development process. This leads to a 96% failure rate in clinical trials and missed treatment opportunities for cancer patients.

As each tumor is different, Orakl Oncology is combining cell biology, engineering and machine learning to build unique tumour avatars for each individual cancer patient that can mimic real-life responses to drugs. Orakl Oncology’s growing collection of avatars captures the complexity and heterogeneity of cancer at the population scale, helping pharma and biotech companies to identify new therapeutic targets or predictive biomarkers and increase clinical trial success rates.

Dr. Fanny Jaulin, Orakl Oncology CEO & Co-Founder, commented, “Our ambition is to become a world-leading techbio platform leveraging the smartest collection of tumour avatars to transform oncology drug development and bring faster, smarter and more cost- effective treatments to patients.”

Launched in 2023 as a spin-out from the Gustave Roussy Institute by co-founders Fanny Jaulin, Diane-Laure Pagès and Gustave Ronteix, Orakl Oncology is targeting the global oncology market, with an initial focus on colorectal and pancreatic cancers.