By James Etheridge

BioWorld International Correspondent

PARIS ¿ Trophos, a Marseille-based company developing treatments for a number of neurodegenerative diseases, finally closed its first funding round, more than a year later than originally planned.

It raised EUR5 million (US$4.4 million) from three business angels and four venture capital funds. (See BioWorld International, Jan. 26, 2000.)

CEO Antoine Biret told BioWorld International that the biggest contributors were two Paris-based funds, Sociiti Ginirale Asset Management and Jet Innovation, in that order. The other two institutional investors were regional French venture capital funds, Sofipaca and Sofimac.

Of the private investors, one is Bernard Majoie, former managing director of the French pharmaceutical company Fournier, of Dijon, while another is John Delayre, who runs a magnetic resonance imaging company in Houston.

Biret said Trophos now has sufficient funds for two years, which should enable it to discover at least one viable drug candidate. That would help it arrange a second funding round in late 2002 or early 2003, which would provide it with the resources necessary to move forward into preclinical development and Phase I clinical trials.

Trophos, which said it is the first drug discovery company specialized in compounds that prevent neuronal cell death, is focusing on three pathologies: motoneuron diseases (spinal muscular atrophy in children and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in adults), Alzheimer¿s disease and Huntington¿s disease. Its motoneuron program is being largely financed by France¿s Muscular Dystrophy Association (AFM), which agreed to provide FFr20 million (US$3 million) over two and a half years starting in 1999. This is also the program expected to generate the first drug candidate to be taken into clinical development.

But Biret stressed the advances that Trophos has made in its Alzheimer¿s research and its recent announcement of the discovery of a new class of differential inhibitors of the g-secretase enzyme. (See BioWorld International, April 24, 2001.)

Before advancing too far with this program, however, Trophos plans to team up with one or more pharmaceutical or biotech companies and negotiate service-based collaborations that will give it the resources to develop and validate novel cellular models for the mechanism of induction of neuronal death.

Trophos¿ research depends on the ready availability of purified cells, and these it obtains from its own proprietary system for purifying and cultivating neuronal cells in a standardized, automated fashion. The process it has developed enables different kinds of neurons ¿ motor neurons, forebrain cholinergic neurons (involved in Alzheimer¿s disease) and other neurons of fetal origin ¿ to be isolated and purified. These neurons are then exposed to specific insults representative of the corresponding disease, as a result of which they die unless they are rescued by neurotrophic factors or drugs.

It also uses gene expression analysis for identifying targets among purified neurons. DNA microarrays, which permit analysis of gene expression even at low cell numbers, provide a profile of neurons¿ molecular characteristics and show up changes in their molecular state when exposed to pathological situations, as well as demonstrating the mechanism of action of small-molecule drugs.

Although its business plan anticipates a third funding round for financing Phase II/III trials, Trophos now has the prospect of earlier-than-expected revenues thanks to a piece of equipment developed as part of its technology platform. The machine is a cellular analyzer, an optical measuring instrument for counting neurons during the high-throughput screening process. The company claims that it can count cell samples on a microtitration plate 10 times faster than conventional flow cytometry equipment, and with equal precision.

Trophos is now looking for a U.S. company specialized in laboratory instruments for the life sciences industry to commercialize the product. It said such a venture could provide it with a significant revenue flow well before it has a drug on the market, which is not likely to be before 2006 or 2007.