Rhenovia Enters Strategic Alliance With Portmann Instruments

Rhenovia Pharma SAS, a biotechnology company specialized in the development and optimization of treatments for diseases of the central and peripheral nervous systems, recently announced the signing of a strategic alliance agreement with Portmann Instruments AG. PIAG is a Swiss company specialized in the manufacture and supply of high-precision instrumentation for the chemical, pharmaceutical, and biotech industries. This agreement will enable Rhenovia to establish a permanent presence in Switzerland, one of Europe‘s largest pharmaceutical markets, and to market a range of services there that utilize its biosimulation platform for optimizing the drug discovery and development activities of biopharmaceutical companies.

Through this alliance, Rhenovia and PIAG will pool their respective know-how and areas of expertise to exploit and capitalize on the new technologies developed by Rhenovia. By teaming up with a Swiss company, Rhenovia will be able to forge closer relations with the many biopharmaceutical companies, technology suppliers, and financial institutions with which it does business and to extend the range of services it can offer to the Swiss nutrition and food supplement market. This alliance is aimed at establishing a new company or joint venture, whose structure, funding, and modus operandi will be determined before the year end.

As part of its strategic alliance with Rhenovia, PIAG is to set up a special unit and an ultra-modern laboratory for physico-chemical analysis. This laboratory will enable Rhenovia to push ahead more rapidly with the development of its technological solutions, proceed with the validation of its biosimulation platforms, and establish proof-of-concept for its Rhenovia Isoelectric Filtration Technologies (RHIFT) platform, which is designed to identify and track biological markers of the efficacy and side-effects of drugs, but also has numerous other industrial applications.

The agreement provides for PIAG to take charge of the prototyping of the very advanced transdermal patch developed by the two companies within the bipartite framework of the European Eurostars project, for which Rhenovia was the project leader. PIAG will be responsible for designing the apparatus to be used for feasibility studies and for setting up the pre-industrialization phases.

“We are delighted with the signing of this strategic alliance agreement with PIAG,” said President & CEO of Rhenovia Pharma Dr. Serge Bischoff. “It is the result of a long-running rapprochement between the two companies’ executives, which took concrete shape in 2008 with the Eurostars project. Through this alliance, Rhenovia, which has only been in existence for 4 years, has been able to create its first subsidiary in Switzerland and speed up the international development of its activities, especially in Switzerland and, by extension, Germany. This agreement is indicative of the importance of our technology portfolio, which ranges from biosimulation to drug delivery and includes extremely efficient techniques for administering tailor-made drugs transdermally. Rhenovia has considerably broadened the field of application of its technology platforms, extending it to drug toxicity and the prevention of disease through nutritional health, as well as to the identification of diagnostic and drug efficacy markers. Rhenovia will continue to enter into partnerships and alliances like today’s one with PIAG to consolidate its activities in these new areas and strengthen its core drug design optimization business.”

“We are pleased that our strong partnership with Rhenovia has spawned this alliance,” added CEO of PIAG Peter Stark. “This new agreement will enable PIAG to undertake new activities, diversify its industrial applications and enter new markets, such as high-precision instrumentation for the pharmaceutical and chemical industries and transdermal procedures and devices for innovative therapies.”