Bioptimus: Partnership with French cancer research network FFCD expands Bioptimus’s STELA programme
- Partnership grants Bioptimus access to unique European cohort of data
- Fédération Francophone de Cancérologie Digestive to share high quality clinical data of 3,000 GI cancer patients
- Significant progress in the STELA programme to build the largest global AI biology model
- More partnership announcements in Bioptimus’s pipeline
Tuesday June 27th 2026 – Paris, France: Bioptimus has signed a partnership with one of France’s most prestigious academic cancer research organisations – the “Fédération Francophone de Cancérologie Digestive” (FFCD) – that advances the biotech company’s goal of building the world’s largest global AI model of biology.
The partnership grants Bioptimus access to a unique and valuable cohort – held by the FFCD – of deeply phenotyped clinical trial data from more than 3,000 gastrointestinal (GI) cancer patients. This high-quality data – enriched with spatial omics – will be incorporated into STELA (Spatial Tissue Embedding Learning Atlas), Bioptimus’s global initiative to build the world’s largest clinically linked, multimodal tissue atlas. The agreement also represents the largest GI cancer spatial omics atlas generated to date.
Under the agreement, the FFCD gains access to Bioptimus’s M-Optimus multimodal foundation model and Bioptimus will sponsor the generation of new spatial transcriptomics data on their patient cohorts. This additional data will measure and map gene activity within a tissue sample, enabling researchers to use AI on routine pathology slides to predict missing gene expression data directly from the image, effectively mapping out molecular signatures within the tumour.
FFCD retains full ownership of the generated data – which it will share with Bioptimus – and will have access to all newly generated spatial omics data produced under the collaboration for use in its own research programmes.
“High-quality clinical data is the key to building a foundation AI model in biotechnology and this agreement will boost vital precision oncology research and patient health,” said David Cahané, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Bioptimus.
“The FFCD data brings European disease biology into STELA adding distinct cultural and genomic backgrounds that will sharpen M-Optimus’s ability to generalise across the global population. It also anchors STELA’s GI cancer coverage in the kind of high-quality, outcome-linked clinical data that spatial atlases rarely include.”
“This collaboration provides a unique opportunity to combine high-quality multimodal dataset including spatial biology data. By leveraging the M-Optimus foundation model, we aim to uncover novel features of tumor heterogeneity in GI cancers and gain deeper insights into the complex interactions between the tumour and its microenvironment. Ultimately, these findings may help reveal hidden mechanisms driving treatment resistance and response, paving the way toward more precise and personalized therapeutic strategies for patients” said Prof. Pierre LAURENT-PUIG from the Fédération Francophone de Cancérologie Digestive.
The agreement represents a significant step forward in Bioptimus’s STELA initiative to profile 100,000 specimens across a global network of research institutions and clinical partners, creating a multimodal data infrastructure that will be twenty times larger than any existing spatial biology atlas.
“Through partnerships such as the FFCD, STELA aims to maximise diversity in its data, covering a wide range of disease areas, patient populations, and data modalities,” said David Cahané. “By gathering matched multi-modal data – H&E, spatial transcriptomics and RNA-seq – researchers can correlate the tissue image with the underlying genetics to get an unrivalled picture of tumour biology.”
“These kinds of partnerships allow access to and analysis of high-quality, outcome-linked clinical data that spatial atlases rarely include. We’ll now have access to rich data about the tumour microenvironment, an essential tool for understanding cancer biology and informing clinical trial research.”
“And the exciting news is that we have more agreements looming on the horizon … so watch this space.”
For additional information, please contact:
Kevin Maxwell
Maxwell Communications
(m) +44 (0)7985 351 797
About Bioptimus (https://www.bioptimus.com/)
Bioptimus is a global AI tech company that is pioneering the first world model for biology. By combining cutting-edge AI with massive multimodal, proprietary data generation, Bioptimus is building a unifying framework that connects all scales of biology — from molecules to patients — delivering interpretable, dynamic, and actionable insights. To power this vision, we develop best-in-class multimodal models that outperform standard benchmarks and are utilized by leading industry partners. These models integrate diverse biological data layers—from histology to genomics to clinical metrics—into a unified representation of disease. These models form the backbone of a new, data-driven paradigm for biomedical discovery and development.
About the FFCD (https://www.ffcd.fr/)
The Fédération Francophone de Cancérologie Digestive (FFCD) is a leading academic cooperative group dedicated to clinical and translational research in digestive cancers. The FFCD conducts multicenter clinical trials from study design to data analysis and publication. Through its integrated teams in project management, biostatistics, data management, monitoring, and scientific valorization, the FFCD develops and maintains high-quality clinical databases and biological collections to advance precision oncology. In addition to research activities, the FFCD provides continuing medical education for healthcare professionals and realise collaborations with academic institutions and industry partners. Its mission is to accelerate innovation in digestive oncology and translate scientific discoveries into tangible benefits for patients.
SOURCE: Bioptimus
