Learning From Cancer Survivors to Transform Oncology
Nicolas Wolikow is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cure51, a TechBio company on a mission to decode the biology of cancer survivors who have beaten the odds. With more than two decades of experience in digital health, life sciences, and entrepreneurship, Nicolas Wolikow previously co-founded the French telemedicine platform Qare and served as Chief Digital Officer at Ipsen. Today, with Cure51, he focuses on building the first global survivorship database to unlock new therapeutic targets and inspire more effective treatments for aggressive cancers.
A Different Approach: Studying the Outliers
Instead of asking why cancer patients die, Cure51 flips the question: Why do some people survive?
Nicolas Wolikow explains that only one to two percent of patients with highly aggressive cancers defy statistics and live much longer than expected. Cure51 calls them “Exceptional Survivors.” By studying these outliers, collecting their data, and comparing them with patients who did not survive, the company aims to identify biological patterns and targets that could lead to new therapies.
Building a Global Database of Survivors
To achieve this, Cure51 collaborates with over 100 hospitals worldwide, including leading institutions like Charité in Berlin and Gustave Roussy in Paris. The company collects multiple layers of data – clinical history, imaging, tumor samples, and genomic information – to conduct multi-omic analysis supported by AI.
Wolikow highlights that the strength of the project lies in its global reach and standardized protocols, allowing comparisons across diverse populations and health systems. Patients are eager to participate, often motivated by the hope that their unique survival story could help others.
From Data to New Therapies
The ultimate goal is not just to collect data, but to translate insights into action. Cure51 is building a validated library of potential therapeutic targets. Nicolas Wolikow emphasizes that Cure51 will partner with pharmaceutical and biotech companies to transform these findings into new drugs, while keeping intellectual property and scientific leadership within the company.
First promising results are already emerging: within just months, Cure51 has identified and validated new targets in pancreatic cancer – a process that usually takes years in traditional labs.
Patients at the Heart of Cure51
The conversation also includes Yann, a pancreatic cancer survivor and member of the Cure51 team, who shares his powerful journey. His story highlights the importance of mindset, hope, and resilience. For Wolikow, engaging with patients is not just a necessity for data collection, but a core part of Cure51’s identity: listening to survivors fuels motivation and keeps the mission human-centered.
Technology as an Enabler
Nicolas Wolikow stresses that Cure51’s work would not be possible without recent advances in technology. Single-cell analysis, AI-driven pattern recognition, and global data infrastructures now allow researchers to study cancer at an unprecedented resolution. The falling cost of genomic sequencing and data processing also makes large-scale projects like Cure51 feasible today.
A Message of Hope
At the end of the episode, Nicolas Wolikow shares a simple but powerful message: “Hope is for everyone.” He reminds patients to trust their medical teams, stay mentally strong, and believe in the rapid progress of science. Cure51’s vision is bold: to turn survival stories into actionable knowledge and ultimately eradicate cancer.
Nicolas Wolikow wants to decode survival – and turn hope into science
This episode of Visionaries of Health offers a rare glimpse into a groundbreaking approach: learning from survivors instead of focusing only on disease progression. Nicolas Wolikow shows how data, technology, and human stories can come together to reshape oncology. If you want to understand how science is being reimagined to fight the deadliest cancers, you should listen to this episode until the very end.
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