Saclay (France), September 14th, 2026 – Servier, an independent international pharmaceutical company governed by a Foundation, and Cure51, a TechBio company owning the world’s first global database of exceptional cancer survivors in hard to treat cancers, announce today they will run a research program. This collaboration aims to identify novel potential targets of interest in glioblastoma (GBM), marking a significant step forward in the fight against this devastating disease and representing Cure51’s inaugural partnership with a pharmaceutical laboratory.
Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common and aggressive malignant primary brain tumor in adults. Characterized by its rapid progression and highly invasive nature, the prognosis for glioblastoma remains poor, with a median survival time generally ranging from 12 to 18 months. Its complex heterogeneity and the challenges posed by crossing the blood-brain barrier make it a particularly difficult cancer to treat effectively.
While the prognosis remains extremely unfavorable for most patients, some outliers survive more than five years and are systematically identified through CURE51’s network of more than 150 oncology centers across 38 countries. Cure51 extracts and validates the biological mechanisms that underpin long-term survival, paving the way for first-in-class treatments.
Focused on rare cancers, Servier’s R&D develops major therapeutic innovations. Leveraging its expertise in precision medicine, Servier prioritizes areas of greatest unmet medical needs, including brain tumors.
Cure51 has a singular approach to oncology discovery, by putting the focus on “outliers” approaches cancer uniquely by studying “outliers”, the rare long-term survivors identified through its global exclusive network. By applying computational modeling to the world’s first global clinical and molecular database of these survivors, Cure51 uncovers and validates the mechanisms driving survival to pave the way for first-in-class therapies.
“We are proud to be the pioneering pharmaceutical partner for Cure51. This collaboration underscores Servier’s long-standing commitment and proven scientific expertise in rare oncology. By combining Cure51’s unique insights derived from exceptional glioblastoma survivors with our deep R&D capabilities, we are uniquely positioned to translate groundbreaking biological mechanisms into potential new therapies for patients with few or no treatment options.”
Claude Bertrand, Executive Vice-President, Research & Development, Servier
“By studying the rare patients who survive glioblastoma rather than progressors, Cure51 has built a resource that exists nowhere else: a rigorously curated, global database of exceptional survivors and the computational methodology to learn from it. This partnership brings our unique dataset and expertise together with Servier’s development capabilities to reveal targets that conventional approaches overlook and to turn them into treatments for the patients who need them most.”
Nicolas Wolikow, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Cure51
The primary objective is to identify novel targets of interest to treat GBM. Under the terms of the collaboration, Cure51 is eligible to receive up to €442 million per target in potential milestone payments.
During this phase, Cure51 will disclose priority targets, preselected to address unmet medical needs within the patient population defined by Servier, while also considering constraints such as medication suitability and target‐class.
At the end of this research phase, Servier and Cure 51 will have the opportunity to further explore and validate the identified targets.