Pearl Concepts and Productions was built on one founding belief. The most powerful work begins with a real story and a decision to build something that matters. The CureGBM and Gena Health partnership announced this week is exactly that kind of story.

The gap that should not exist

The standard of care for Glioblastoma has not meaningfully changed in thirty years. Surgery. Radiotherapy. Chemotherapy. Fourteen months average survival from diagnosis. Six to eight months from recurrence. These are not new statistics. They have been the accepted reality of a disease the medical system has, for too long, stopped advancing against

But the science has moved. External Phase I studies in the United States have shown Sonodynamic Therapy delivering a doubling of median survival in patients with recurrent GBM, with no therapy-related adverse events. The treatment is performed awake, in an outpatient clinic, as a day-case procedure, using 5-ALA, a drug neurosurgeons have trusted for over twenty years. A UK patient travelled to New York to access SDT on compassionate grounds. His MRI showed significant tumour reduction. His vision returned.

The therapy exists. The evidence exists. What has not existed, until now, is a European pathway to reach it.

CureGBM is building that pathway

Richard Wakefield and Jane Oberholzer founded CureGBM in 2021 after losing their father to Glioblastoma. From his diagnosis to passing: two months. From that loss came a deliberate decision. Not to campaign. Not to fundraise and wait. To build a clinical-stage MedTech company with the architecture to run regulated trials, navigate Swissmedic approval, and bring SDT from academic papers into European clinics.

Their mission is specific: to make Sonodynamic Therapy the third treatment for brain tumours, after surgery and chemo/radiotherapy. The Bern Phase 1 Safety Trial in Switzerland is the first act of that construction. Everything CureGBM builds, every investor secured, every regulatory milestone cleared, every piece of clinical evidence added to their research library, is infrastructure pointed toward the moment when that trial opens the pathway for European patients.

Jane Oberholzer’s role as Patient Advocate ensures that no one navigating a GBM diagnosis feels alone in the way their family did. That commitment is not in a job description. It is a personal promise.