NEW YORK – French startup Cure51 said on Monday that it is collaborating with Cambridge University Hospitals and seven other UK-based cancer institutions to launch its Rosalind cancer survival study in the UK.
The study, which is already underway elsewhere in Europe, aims to understand the biological underpinnings of exceptional survival in patients with three aggressive cancer types: extensive-stage small cell lung cancer, brain cancer glioblastoma, and metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. The UK phase was recently approved by the country's National Health Service Health Research Authority (HRA).
Researchers involved in the study will collect tumor samples from over 1,000 of the longest-surviving individuals with those cancer types and analyze their DNA, blood proteins, microbes, and molecular biomarkers for signs of what drives their exceptional survival.
"With nearly 400,000 new cancer diagnoses annually in the UK, understanding why some patients achieve remarkable survival is critical," Thankammah Ajithkummar, consultant clinical oncologist at Cambridge University Hospitals, said in a statement. "Patients who appear superficially similar in terms of their age and health, and the type and stage of their cancer, can have remarkably different responses to the same treatment. The Rosalind study represents a promising new approach to investigating the biology of cancer survivors, aiming to uncover insights that could improve outcomes for all patients."
Paris-based Cure51 raised €15 million ($16.3 million) in seed funding earlier this year for the study. Last month, the firm said it will use 10x Genomics' Visium HD platform to perform single-cell resolution transcriptome spatial gene expression analyses of patient tumors.