PHARNEXT
PHARNEXT raises an additional €8 million for its PleotherapyTM platform applied to the treatment of
Charcot-Marie Tooth disease and Alzheimer’s disease
- A total amount raised of €10.5 million in 2011
- This €8 million round follows a €2.5 million round in June
Paris, February 9th 2012 - Pharnext SAS, a biopharmaceutical company specializing in the development of innovative treatments based on Pleotherapy™ for severe neurological diseases, today announced that it has raised €8 million in two tranches in October and December 2011. This fundraising follows a €2.5 million round closed in June 2011.
The €8 million round was conducted as a private placement.
The June 2011 round attracted the following investors: Parinvest (a company controlled by Rallye, the holding company for the Casino supermarket group (CEO: Jean-Charles Naouri), La Financière Gaspard (managed by Georges Sampeur, Chairman of the B&B Hotel Group) and Truffle Capital (a leading European private equity firm managed by Philippe Pouletty MD, a co-founder of Pharnext).
“We would like to thank our existing investors as well as our new investors for their support. This successful fundraising will allow us to further progress our research and development activities for Alzheimer’s disease[1]“, commented Pharnext co-founder and CEO Professor Daniel Cohen. “Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and Alzheimer’s disease are severe neurodegenerative conditions that lack satisfactory treatments; our unique PleotherapyTM [2] approach represents a promising alternative for millions of patients worldwide”.
Pharnext will use the proceeds of these fundraisings to complete the ongoing Phase II clinical study of Pharnext’s first Pleodrug™ for the treatment of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 1A [3] (the completion of patient recruitment was announced by Pharnext in November 2011) and continue to advance the Alzheimer’s disease program (the initiation of clinical trials is scheduled in 2012).
Pharnext has a particularly solid funding base:
- €3.5 million in seed funding with Truffle Capital (2007).
- an agreement with the pharmaceutical company Ipsen, worth up to €94 million in upfront and milestone payments (June 2009).
- €3.4 million in financial support from the OSEO innovation agency for Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (2007).
- a grant-in-aid from the French Muscular Dystrophy Association (AFM) in 2009.
- The DIPPAL project on diagnostic and therapeutic solutions for Alzheimer’s disease patients, funded by the OSEO’s Strategic Industrial Innovation program with a total of €10.4 million over 6 years. Pharnext leads the DIPPAL consortium and will receive €7.3 million (November 2010)
- €4.75 million raised in June 2010
- €2.5 million raised in June 2011
- €7.5 million raised in October 2011
- €0.5 million raised in December 2011
The Pharnext approach:
Pharnext focuses on addressing a broad range of unmet medical needs, diseases for which there is no satisfactory treatment, by moving from conventional, single-drug therapy to Pleotherapy™. Pleotherapy™ combines into a single, patented Pleodrug™ mini-doses of several off-patent drugs that are already approved by health authorities, albeit for other diseases (diseases that are biologically but not clinically linked to the indication targeted by Pharnext). The company has developed a proprietary Pleotherapy™ platform and a fully-integrated structure to conduct highly specialized R&D activities. This novel drug discovery approach is based on “NEXUS”, a new protected process applicable to most diseases that allows the identification of Pleodrugs™ as well as new diagnostic or predictive tests.
About Pharnext
Pharnext was founded in Paris in April 2007 by Professor Daniel Cohen MD, PhD, his team of research scientists (comprising pioneers in the field of genomics) and Philippe Pouletty, MD (General Partner, Truffle Capital).
The company specializes in the discovery and development of novel pharmaceutical treatments. Based on its founders’ extensive experience (over 20 years) in human genetics and systems biology, Pharnext has perfected an innovative, proprietary process for reconstructing the complex biological networks associated with a given disease. By understanding these networks, Pharnext identifies and develops Pleodrugs™, cocktails of low-dose, off-patent drugs already approved for other diseases. The Pleodrugs™ target different nodes of the complex biological networks associated with the disease. Pharnext performs all aspects of Pleodrug™ R&D up to the end of Phase II clinical trials, before licensing the product to the pharmaceutical industry. Although this approach can be applied to any disease, the company is concentrating on neurodegenerative, inflammatory and metabolic diseases.
Certain statements contained in the present press release may be forward-looking statements based on current expectations. As such, they involve various risks and uncertainties.
| Contacts:
PHARNEXT Daniel Cohen +33 1 41 09 22 30
|
ALIZE RP Caroline Carmagnol +33 6 64 18 99 59 Anne-Sophie Cosquéric +33 1 42 68 86 41 |
[1] In France, it is estimated that 800,000 people suffer from Alzheimer’s disease (source: www.plan-alzheimer.gouv.fr. The disease is closely correlated to population ageing and the increase in life expectancy. The prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease will continue to progress in the coming years and the condition is considered to be a national priority in France. With 220,000 new cases per year in the country, Alzheimer’s disease is both a public health problem and a societal problem.
[2] see page 2: The Pharnext approach
[3] Charcot-Marie Tooth Disease is a severe, invalidating, chronic neuromuscular disease that affects 3 million people worldwide and for which there is currently no treatment.