EIT Health: Affichem wins Special Public Prize in 'Health Catapult 2017'
Affichem develops AF243 compound for patients with hearing loss.
Affichem, a company supported by EIT Health France, has provided scientific and managerial know-how for developing their award winning compounds of Dendrogenin families as promising drug candidates in the field of oncology, auditory degeneration (deafness and hearing loss) and dermo-cosmetic applications.
AF243 displays the following advantages over competitors:
• easy to produce with a unique mechanism of action in hearing loss field;
• effective and non-toxic by oral administration;
• properties both protective and regenerative.
For these reasons, AF243 is competitive and should offer a unique opportunity in the future for patients suffering from deafness. Therefore, Affichem plans to develop AF243 as an oral medication for the prevention and treatment of hearing loss and also to improve the effectiveness of cochlear implants. AF243 is prone to afford an innovative and effective solution for the treatment of hearing loss that poses a growing threat to human well-being and "well-aging".
Recent news from Affichem
European Health Catapult:
In the first quarter of 2017, Affichem decided to apply to the European Health Catapult competition organized under the guidance of the European Union within the French national selection.
This European Health Catapult competition selects the best European start-ups. Affichem was the only French company selected for the finals that took place in London, and they won the Special Public Prize of this European Competition.
Recent publications
The results from the collaboration with the team of researchers - PhD Marc Poirot and Sandrine Silvente-Poirot and Affichem - were published in an article in the prestigious review Nature Communications explaining that Dendrogenin A is a very effective anticancer drug in various preclinical models of melanoma (skin cancer) and acute myeloid leukaemia (cancer of the blood), including tumours resistant to clinically used treatments.
Moreover, their work also appears in the review Proceedings of the National Academy, where they report the identification of a metabolism associated with the development of breast cancer. This onco-metabolism, which is not present in the normal breast, therefore defines a cancerous condition.
They also obtained the “Seal of Excellence” for their AffiTan project that has been submitted during the call for projects SME Instrument / H2020 of the European Commission. In the framework of Horizon 2020, the research and innovation program of the European Union, this Seal of Excellence rewards the highly scientific quality of this project and it should facilitate the access to various sources of funding, such as the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESI) and other national or regional investment programs.
Evolution
In the short term, Affichem is in the process of raising funds on its two main Strategic Business Units (SBU) in oncology and deafness in order to bring its different drug candidates into clinical trials.
Regarding the clinical evaluation of AF243 for the treatment of deafness, it includes the finalization of preclinical studies (batch production of GMP, regulatory ADME-T and preparation / validation of IND packaging) and the clinical evaluation of our drug candidate (Clinical Trial Phase I / II).
In the medium and long term, the objective is to build a strategic alliances with one or more major companies of the field in order to be able to sublicense its candidates of the best conditions and from the end of phase IIa and IIb to a major actor of the industrial field.
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