Investment round completed
Pharmaxon, a new company specialising in the discovery and development of innovative drugs for central nervous system disorders, announced the completion of a seed financing round of over €500,000 from investors Inserm Transfert Initiative, Esperante, Primaveris and CAAP Création.
The funds will be used to accelerate preclinical development of the Marseille-based company's current programmes. The compounds target neuroplasticity, aiming to trigger a nerve cell's ability to spontaneously regrow and/or modify its inter-cellular connections in the event of injury. They have produced clear, positive effects on motor activity and memory in an animal model of spinal cord injury and in aged animals, respectively.
The first clinical trials are scheduled to start in 2008, in patients suffering from spinal cord injury.
The second category of compounds under development modulates cell mobility, with the aim of preventing cancer metastases. In an animal model, they inhibit the growth of glioblastoma, a highly invasive brain cancer.
"The company's biological targets are families of molecules involved in intercellular communication and cohesion of nervous tissues, that is, adhesion molecules controlling cell mobility", explains Chief Operations Officer and co-founder, Jean-Chrétien Norreel.
Pharmaxon is a spin out from Developmental Biology Institute of Marseille-Luminy
"The success of this seed funding round constitutes an acknowledgement of the potential of our research and the quality of our entrepreneurial strategy. We shall now accelerate the development of our drug candidates in general and our spinal cord injury programme in particular", said Pascal Deschaseaux, co-founder and CEO.
Pharmaxon is a two-time prizewinner of the French Ministry of Research's national start-up challenge, a national prizewinner in the French Senate's Tremplin Entreprises business enterprise competition and winner of the Cap Innovation Méditerranée prize.
The Inserm-Transfert Initiative is a new €4.2 million venture capital company dedicated to seed finance in the biomedical field. It is owned by a four way partnership of Inserm-Transfert SA, CDC Entreprises, Ventech and Sofinnova Partners.
Primaveris is a seed fund specialising in equity finance for hi-tech start-ups from the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region in southern France.
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