What's Happening?
One Biosciences, a techbio company spun off from Institut Curie, has received €3.3 million in funding under the France 2030 i-Démon program. This investment will accelerate the development of its single-cell diagnostic platform, OneMap™, for triple-negative
breast cancer (TNBC). The project, named CAST (Cancer Single-cell Analysis for Therapy), is a four-year collaboration with Institut Curie. It aims to bring OneMap™ to market as the first single-cell diagnostic platform designed to guide treatment decisions for TNBC patients, commercialized as an in vitro diagnostic test. OneMap™ combines single-cell transcriptomics and AI to analyze tumors at individual cell resolution, providing clinically actionable reports within two weeks from standard hospital biopsies.
Why It's Important?
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) accounts for 15-20% of breast cancer cases and is characterized by high relapse rates, rapid progression, and limited treatment options. A major challenge is the lack of reliable biomarkers to predict patient response to immunotherapy or chemotherapy. Current diagnostic methods average signals across millions of cells, masking the tumor heterogeneity that drives resistance and treatment failure. One Biosciences' OneMap™ platform addresses this by deciphering tumor heterogeneity at single-cell resolution, identifying specific cell populations that may drive treatment resistance. This precision could enable clinicians to make more informed, personalized treatment decisions, potentially improving outcomes and quality of life for TNBC patients by ensuring they receive the most suitable therapy for their unique disease biology.
What's Next?
The CAST project will focus on four key areas over the next four years: industrializing the OneMap™ platform, validating predictive biomarkers in TNBC, preparing for regulatory approval, and scaling One Biosciences’ centralized clinical laboratory infrastructure in the Paris region for future commercial deployment. Initial studies have already demonstrated the platform's ability to generate high-quality single-cell data from TNBC biopsies and identify cellular signatures linked to immunotherapy response. The project will build on Institut Curie’s clinical expertise, accessing a cohort of over 300 TNBC patients to create the world’s largest clinically annotated single-cell dataset in triple-negative breast cancer. This comprehensive effort aims to bridge the gap between cutting-edge research and routine clinical practice, making single-cell precision oncology a reality.
Beyond the Headlines
This funding and project signify a major shift towards precision oncology, moving beyond bulk tumor analysis to understand cancer at the individual cell level. The ability to identify specific cell populations driving treatment resistance has profound implications for drug development, allowing for the creation of more targeted therapies. Ethically, this advancement promises to reduce the burden of ineffective treatments on patients, minimizing side effects and improving quality of life. However, the implementation of such advanced diagnostics will require significant investment in healthcare infrastructure, training for medical professionals, and robust regulatory frameworks to ensure equitable access and accurate interpretation of complex data. This also highlights the growing role of AI in medical diagnostics, transforming how diseases are understood and treated.
