€3.3m · Grant · Healthtech · Paris, France
One Biosciences, a Paris-based precision-oncology company spun out of Institut Curie, has secured €3.3m in grant funding from Bpifrance through the France 2030 i-Démo programme. The grant will fund CAST, a four-year project with Institut Curie to develop OneMap as an in-vitro diagnostic for triple-negative breast cancer.
The programme will industrialise the platform, validate predictive biomarkers, prepare for regulatory approval and expand One Biosciences’ central clinical-laboratory infrastructure in the Paris region. The partners say CAST will draw on a cohort of more than 300 patients with triple-negative breast cancer and aim to build a large clinically annotated single-cell dataset for the disease.
OneMap combines single-cell transcriptomics with AI to analyse tumour biopsies at the level of individual cells. According to One Biosciences’ platform description, its workflow accepts routine FFPE or frozen samples and is designed to return clinician-facing reports within two weeks. That differs from bulk sequencing, which averages molecular signals across many cells and can hide smaller populations associated with treatment resistance.
The company and Institut Curie report that earlier joint studies generated high-quality single-cell data from routine triple-negative breast-cancer biopsies and identified cellular signatures associated with response to immunotherapy. Those results are an early technical foundation; CAST now has to show that the approach can produce repeatable biomarkers that support treatment decisions in a regulated diagnostic setting.
The grant funds translation, not a finished diagnostic
CAST’s commercial importance lies in moving a research workflow towards a product that hospitals can use consistently. The cohort gives One Biosciences access to samples and clinical outcomes needed to test whether cellular signatures predict response, while the laboratory expansion addresses the operational side of delivering analyses on clinical timelines.
That translation creates several linked execution tests. Sample preparation must remain reliable across variable hospital biopsies, the analytical pipeline must produce stable results, and prospective evidence must show that its reports add value beyond established pathology. Regulatory preparation also requires the company to define a repeatable test rather than a bespoke research service.
If those steps succeed, OneMap could support two routes to market: a diagnostic used by oncologists and a biomarker platform for pharmaceutical trials. The first depends on clinical utility and reimbursement; the second depends on helping drug developers stratify patients or explain mixed trial responses. The €3.3m grant is therefore best understood as non-dilutive funding for the evidence and infrastructure between promising single-cell science and a deployable diagnostic, not proof that routine clinical adoption has already been achieved.
