BioWorld International Correspondent

PARIS - Novagali Pharma announced the start of a Phase I trial of its lead product, Cationorm, in ophthalmology indications and said it was seeking financing.

Cationorm is the first of a series of products being developed by Novagali for various eye diseases and is being tested on healthy patients to evaluate its tolerability.

The company's vice president of research and development, Grégory Lambert, told BioWorld International that Cationorm was a "generic formulation" that could be used to deliver different active principles.

Novagali Pharma, which focuses on ophthalmology, specializes in developing drugs dissolved in emulsions, enabling products that are not soluble in the emulsion to be circulated in the organism. In particular, it produces cationic, positively charged nanoemulsions. As Lambert explained, that is critical since the cells on the surface of the eye are negatively charged, and the resulting electrostatic attraction brings the active principle into closer contact with the eye, improves its penetration and lengthens its period of action.

In late October, Novagali received the first €5 million tranche of a second financing, and Lambert said the company was continuing negotiations in the hope of obtaining another €5 million. In its first funding round completed at the end of 2000, the company raised €3.8 million.

Lambert added that Novagali was about to move out of the incubator at the Genopole, France's national biotechnology science and business park in Evry, where it has been housed since the company's foundation in August 2000, and into larger premises on the same campus. Its new facility is 850 square meters in size (as opposed to its current 250-square-meter space) and incorporates a pilot production unit complying with GMP norms.