Rhenovia Pharma SAS, a biotechnology company specialized in the development and optimization of treatments for diseases of the central and peripheral nervous system, announces today that it has signed a strategic partnership agreement with the French Muscular Dystrophy Association (Association Française contre les Myopathies – AFM). The two-year agreement is worth more than 500,000 Euros.
This strategic collaboration is aimed at speeding up the development of Rhenovia’s unique technology for simulating neuronal transmission and pushing ahead with experimental validation so as to be able to apply the technology faster. It will give AFM access to a speedier scientific approach for discovering and developing new pharmacological treatments for rare neurodegenerative diseases. This approach will also benefit pathologies that affect larger patient numbers, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Rhenovia’s neuronal transmission biosimulation platform is currently the most sophisticated simulation technology used in research into new medicines for diseases affecting the brain. It also improves the efficacy and/or the side-effect profiles of existing medicines and enables drug candidates sidelined by the pharmaceutical industry to be reassessed. The Rhenovia platform is capable of reproducing experimental results on a computer and, conversely, of predicting the effects of medicines whose efficacy can then be confirmed experimentally. This technology brings a reduction in costs, since part of the research on animal models is replaced by computer studies, improves the success rate for drug candidates by taking account of physiological and pathological realities, and reduces the time to market (fewer false leads, etc.).
The potency and validity of the approach adopted by Rhenovia’s researchers - the first in the world to have succeeded in simulating on a computer the intimate cellular and molecular mechanisms that are affected in certain nervous system pathologies - were described in a recent publication (Ambert et al., Open Access Bioinformatics, 2010, 2:113-125) and in several scientific papers presented at the American Neuroscience Society congress in San Diego on November 13-17 (http://www.rhenovia.com).
Rhenovia is already making its unique technology available to the biopharmaceutical industry as a service or through partnerships. This enables companies to optimize their research and development into drugs for numerous central nervous system diseases, in particular through the discovery and validation of new therapeutic targets, in silico pharmacological characterization, improvements in the efficacy of drug candidates, and the extension of patent protection for products on the market whose patents are about to run out. The extension of Rhenovia’s platform, especially through its collaboration with the AFM, will facilitate the creation of a new platform specially designed for application to peripheral nervous system diseases in general and diseases connected with a change in muscular plaque in particular (eg muscular dystrophy, lateral amyotrophic sclerosis and multiple sclerosis).
“Rhenovia is delighted to combine its efforts with those of the AFM, a leading player on the French research scene, especially in the area of research into treatments for rare nervous system diseases and genetic muscular diseases,” said the chairman and CEO of Rhenovia Pharma, Dr. Serge Bischoff. “Our unique technology will enable research laboratories associated with the AFM to improve their efficiency and optimize their research costs. This agreement is a perfect illustration of the relevance and strength of our technology.”
“This agreement with Rhenovia, the world leader in its field, will enable us to speed up some of our research programs and open up new avenues of research for rare diseases of the central and peripheral nervous system,” said the AFM’s scientific director, DrSerge Braun. “These advances will also benefit more common neurodegenerative diseases.”
Rhenovia
