The first symptom was acidity in his stomach.
Yann Bizien was living a standard life in Paris in 2017. Software industry. Account manager. Selling solutions to enterprise. A four-year-old daughter. Pretty much standard health. He wasn’t the kind of guy who went to doctors. He did a little bit of sports. He had a healthy life.
Then came the stomach acidity. It increased. And one day he couldn’t eat anymore.
In 2017, at age 35, the diagnosis came back: stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
“Even the word cancer was not possible to associate this with my life,” he tells me. “It was a shock.”
Most people don’t know much about pancreatic cancer. Most people who get it don’t survive it. Five-year survival rates hover around 11 percent. Stage 4 is essentially a death sentence.
Yann’s doctors never talked about being cured. They talked about managing the disease. They talked about hoping. They didn’t talk about recovery.
The Long Road
What Yann didn’t know when he started his chemotherapy was that he would end up taking more than a hundred cycles of it.
He stayed in the hospital for more than five years.
The drug was FOLFIRINOX. If you know anything about cancer treatment, you know this name. It’s one of the most brutal, most toxic chemotherapy regimens out there. It destroys your body in order to save your life. Or tries to.
He was so tired. So much nausea. So much being sick that he’d spend whole days after chemotherapy in his bedroom doing nothing, conscious of being useless. That’s the hardest part when you’re a young father. You can’t play. You can’t be dynamic. You can’t be the person you were.
Two weeks between cycles. First week awful. Second week starting to feel better. Then back to the hospital.
But something was working. After six rounds, the doctors did their blood tests and scans. They couldn’t even measure how many cancer cells he had anymore. They’d gone so low the tests couldn’t detect them.
“I remember I took an Excel file and said, ‘Okay, so it’s decreasing each time. It’s so encouraging. I think in six months I will be here,’” he says.
He charted his cancer markers like a data scientist tracking a project. Because even in the middle of his disease, he had to believe in something. He had to have a goal.
The Family Project
At some point early in his treatment, his oncologist said something that changed his perspective.
“Yann, we’re going to preserve your fertility in case you want to have another child. Don’t think about it yet. But we’re doing it first. Then if you have the possibility, you can think about it.”
Most people in his situation would have thought: I might not survive. Why would I have another child?
Yann thought: I’m confident I’ll beat this. And I always wanted a second child.
So he said yes.
More than three years after his diagnosis, his second daughter was born in 2020.
“This is one benefit from cancer,” he says, “even if it’s a kind of special life.”
The Relapse
In late 2021, more than four years after his diagnosis, Yann felt pain. Not specific pain. But close to where the pancreatic tumor had been.
He was afraid. He talked to his oncologist immediately.
“Don’t worry. Probably nothing. We’ll wait and see how it evolves,” they said.
It evolved badly.
His cancer markers started going up again. And when they finally did a PET scan, the diagnosis came back: relapse.
“It was devastating,” he says. “I had the sensation of losing four years of treatment and tough treatment. And now we have to go back.”
He went back on FOLFIRINOX. He already knew what it would do to him. He already knew the pain, the exhaustion, the weight loss.
But this time, his oncology team had a different idea. They talked about a surgeon. They wanted him to see a specialist.
Yann was confused. The doctors had always told him he wasn’t eligible for surgery. Surgery was for early-stage patients. Stage 1, maybe stage 2. Not stage 4. Never stage 4.
The Surgeon’s Different Story
But the surgeon had a completely different perspective.
“You’re young,” the surgeon said. “And I’m looking at your history. Yes, you had a relapse. But when I look at your metastasis in the liver, it hasn’t moved for years. That suggests these probably aren’t cancer cells. If we look at your whole medical history, you might not actually be stage 4 anymore.”
This was the first time anyone had suggested such a thing.
“And since you’re a very good responder to chemotherapy,” the surgeon continued, “and you’re young, the Whipple surgery might be your only shot at a cure. You have to take it.”
For Yann, it was like someone had given him permission to hope again.
He did six more rounds of chemotherapy to shrink the tumors. Then, in summer 2022, he went into surgery.
He was calm. He knew he was in good hands. They opened him up and found a metastasis he hadn’t seen on the scans. It was an emergency moment. They rushed it for analysis.
It wasn’t cancer.
So they proceeded with the Whipple. They removed the head of his pancreas. They removed part of his stomach, his duodenum, his gallbladder. They reconstructed what was left.
“Removing the head of the pancreas is not a big deal,” he says. “But the reconstruction of all that is a big deal.”
The Recovery
The recovery was brutal. He came home in June 2022. Very difficult. Digestion troubles. He stayed in the restroom two hours losing consciousness. Some days that summer he couldn’t even walk 200 meters without thinking he would fall.
He called the hospital. “Is this normal?”
“Unfortunately,” they said, “you have to let time go. Be patient.”
But day after day, week after week, month after month, everything changed. His weight went up. His strength came back. Climbing the stairs got easier.
And at the end of his chemotherapy after surgery, they gave him the news he’d been waiting for: it was the end of treatment.
“It was the end of treatment. A very, very good news for me. It was Christmas time. A very nice Christmas gift. It was amazing. I was so happy to have this new life.”
The Opportunity
By 2024, Yann was seven years out from his diagnosis. He was thinking about going back to work. Maybe starting new projects. Focusing on staying healthy, on his family, on consolidation.
Then his oncologist called. “Yann, we have another news for you. There’s a company, a French biotech company. They’re leading a study about cancer survivors. Stage 4 pancreatic cancer survivors specifically. We don’t have so many. But you are one of them. Are you interested?”
The company was Cure 51. Their idea was radical.
Most of the time, when pharmaceutical companies develop new treatments, they study what failed. They study people who died from cancer. They learn from deaths.
Cure 51 wanted to do something different. They wanted to study people who survived. They wanted to look at the biology, the immune systems, the genetics of outliers like Yann.
If you survived stage 4 pancreatic cancer, something in your body is working. Something is protecting you. What is it?
“Oh wow, they’re doing this? Is this real?” Yann said when he heard about it.
He went to their website that same day. Cure 51. Until All Survive. They were raising money. They were in Paris, not somewhere on the other side of the world.
“If I can help even one person in the world with my biology,” he said, “with all the data that I have, please take it.”
The New Mission
When Yann got the call from the co-founders, Nicola and Simon, something clicked.
He’d been thinking about going back to work. But he couldn’t find anything with real meaning. This felt like the opportunity. Like the surgery. Like the kind of chance you have to take.
He called them. “Hey guys, I’m Yann. This is my story.”
“Oh wow. We love your story. We don’t have so many chances to meet survivors in person. Come to the office. Let’s have a meeting.”
They had just started a patient committee. They wanted to know how to involve patients in the biological project, in the clinical study. Yann had the background. He had the lived experience. He could help.
By the end of 2024, he started working with Cure 51, one to two days a week. Not 100 percent of his time. He needed to be careful with his health. But progressively helping them build something new.
“Every day I wake up, my goal is: how can I help in cancer research?” he says. “I’m bringing that patient perspective and bringing that message of hope that we have, which is so powerful.”
The Message
When Yann tells his story to people, it lands differently than the typical cancer narrative.
Just this morning, a French woman contacted him to get help and hope through the story she’d read somewhere.
That’s why he does this. Because recently diagnosed people need to know survival is possible. But so do their families. Their friends. Everyone around them.
So within Cure 51, Yann helps lead two specific missions.
First: amplify the message of hope. Whatever they can do. Social media. Podcasts. Interviewing other survivors. Speaking at conferences about patient experience.
Second: bridge the gap between researchers and patients. Because there’s a gap. Researchers and patients could work together. They don’t. But they could. And Yann helps find those opportunities.
On his definition of advocacy: “Anything that you can do as a person that helps the cancer fight. It could be very large. It goes from raising awareness for all the cancers. Anything that can help. Because there are lots of topics. But anything that helps.”
The Question That Matters
I ask Yann: if money, time, and institutional gatekeeping were off the table, what would he do right now?
“I think I would expand this process of studying super survivors to all disease across the globe. Not just pancreatic cancer. Not just glioblastoma or lung cancer. But look at how we can find new targets, find new revolutionary therapeutics through the lens of the people who survived.”
That’s the insight. The people who lived. Not the people who died. The outliers. The ones where something in the biology said yes instead of no.
Connect With Yann and Cure 51
If you want to learn more about what Yann and Cure 51 are doing:
Website for survivors and newly diagnosed: untilallsurvive.com
Contact: You can reach out through either website, and Yann personally answers 100% of requests
They want to hear from you. If you’re a cancer survivor, if you’re newly diagnosed, if you want to support the project. There are many ways to be part of this.
Final Thoughts
Stage 4 pancreatic cancer is supposed to be a death sentence.
Yann Bizien is proof that statistics are not prophecy. That biology is not destiny. That somewhere in the difference between the person who dies and the person who survives is a clue. A secret. Something worth studying.
Most cancer research looks backward. What went wrong? What killed them?
Yann and Cure 51 are looking forward. What went right? What saved them?
Because if you can understand the people who survived, maybe you can make more survivors.
Seven years out from his diagnosis, Yann is healthier than he’s been in years. He’s working on a project that matters. He’s helping other cancer patients find hope. He’s a father. He’s living a new life.
And he’s doing it while knowing that every part of his biology, every detail of his treatment, every moment of his survival is now part of the research that might save the next person who gets that devastating diagnosis.
That’s advocacy. That’s hope. That’s what Until All Survive means.
If you’re a pancreatic cancer survivor, or a survivor of glioblastoma or lung cancer, your story might be the key to unlocking something important. Reach out to Cure 51. Share your data. Be part of the study. Because you survived for a reason. And now science wants to know why.
