DEINOVE Passes Second Milestone of the AGIR Program

DEINOVE recently announced it has successfully completed the second key milestone of the AGIR program – Antibiotics against Resistant Infectious Germs – which is supported by the Investments for the Future Program. This milestone triggered the payment of $1.7 million.

The AGIR program aims to explore the antimicrobial potential of rare bacterial strains with the objective of identifying new antibiotic structures and developing innovative treatments to address the health challenge of increasing antimicrobial resistance.

“As illustrated by the current coronavirus crisis, infections, whether bacterial or viral, are now rapidly becoming global. It is important to prevent these health emergencies, and to ensure that common infections won’t become lethal again. This risk is increased by the rise in antibiotic resistance. However, only about 40 antibiotics are currently in clinical development, and only 1 out of 4 drugs in the pipeline represent a novel drug class or mechanism of action. It is becoming urgent to discover new antibacterial treatments,” says Charles Woler, CEO of DEINOVE.

The challenge of AGIR is to accelerate the screening of antibiotic activities of multiple strains under various conditions in order to quickly detect new antimicrobial structures. The first stage of the program led to the development of a robotic platform. The second stage addressed several components:

-Significant increase of the bacterial collection: more than 2,000 additional strains have been integrated through targeted harvesting and partnerships;

-Analysis of antimicrobial activities: 2,000 strains have been screened; 500 active extracts have been identified;

-Hit detection and identification: analysis of the most promising extracts has led to the detection of around 30 hits. The characterization enables the identification of potential new bioactive molecules, previously unknown. The work in progress aims at optimizing the production of these molecules; and

-Validation of the tools developed: the techniques for strain screening, identification and purification of the active entities have been optimized to gain in speed, sensitivity and efficiency.

Under the terms of the collaborative research program selected in 2017 by the Investments for the Future Program, this achievement resulted in the validation of the second milestone of the AGIR program and the payment of $1.7 million in repayable advances and subsidies.

“The AGIR Program is moving forward simultaneously on two fronts: discovering new antibiotic structures and developing robust tools to accelerate the analysis of thousands of bacteria in an intelligent way to increase the chances of finding these new antibiotics. We’re not just looking for new treatments, we’re developing new ways of searching,” says Guillaume Brandt, Pharmaceutical Development Officer at DEINOVE, and Project Manager of AGIR.

The AGIR program – Antibiotics Against Resistant Infectious Germs – was selected in 2017 by the Investments for the Future Program and receives from Bpifrance a financial support of $16.3 million over 5 years.

The AGIR program aims to explore a wide-ranging biodiversity, mainly rare micro-organisms in order to identify and develop a portfolio of drug candidates.

While the world lacks new antibiotics, research is still predominantly focused on a small number of micro-organisms of interest or on the construction by chemical synthesis of molecules derived from existing drugs.

Conversely, the AGIR program is developing new methods of collection, culture, evaluation of the antibiotic potential of rare bacterial strains, and optimization of the molecules of interest.

The AGIR program is run with the Charles Viollette Institute (University of Lille) which brings its expertise in microbial and enzymatic engineering as well as identification of molecules.

Capitalizing on its technology that enables automated and accelerated analysis of large quantities of strains, DEINOVE aims to maximize the opportunities to discover new antibiotic structures by expanding its field of research beyond its own bacterial library.

The company has entered into partnerships with several companies, including bioMérieux and Naicons, with portfolios of diverse strains collected as part of their pharmaceutical activities.

DEINOVE is a French biotechnology company, a leader in disruptive innovation, which aims to help meet the challenges of antibiotic resistance and the transition to a sustainable production model for the cosmetics and nutrition industries. DEINOVE has developed a unique and comprehensive expertise in the field of rare bacteria that it can decipher, culture, and optimize to disclose unsuspected possibilities and induce them to produce biobased molecules with activities of interest on an industrial scale. To do so, DEINOVE has been building and documenting since its creation an unparalleled biodiversity bank that it exploits thanks to a unique technological platform in Europe.

DEINOVE is organized around two areas of expertise:

-ANTIBIOTICS, New-generation anti-infective drugs: A first antibiotic candidate, DNV3837, is now in Phase II. The Company is also pursuing the systematic exploration of biodiversity to supply its portfolio with new leads, drawing notably on partnerships with bioMérieux and Naicons (AGIR program supported by Bpifrance).

-BIOACTIVES, Active ingredients of natural origin with cosmetics as the first market: DEINOVE is already marketing a first cosmetic active ingredient, a second in partnership with Greentech and plans to launch new assets in 2020. Several other cosmetic actives are in development, including with Oléos (Hallstar Group) and Dow. It also runs a program in animal nutrition with Groupe Avril.

Within the Euromedecine science park located in Montpellier, DEINOVE employs 60 employees, mainly researchers, engineers, and technicians, and has filed about 350 patent applications internationally. The Company has been listed on EURONEXT GROWTH since April 2010.