DEINOVE, ESPCI Paris and INRAE awarded grant following the call for proposals of the French “Antibiotic resistance” Priority Research Program
The evaluations reached the same conclusion: the microfluidic technology developed by DEINOVE is considered by the scientific and industrial community as a major asset for the screening and identification of new therapeutic solutions from bacterial biodiversity.\nAntibiotic resistance has become a major public health emergency that is now mobilizing the entire international community5, and of course France.
DEINOVE, ESPCI Paris and INRAE awarded grant following the call for proposals of the French
“Antibiotic resistance” Priority Research Program
- The Microflu4AMR project, based on microfluidic technology and the exploitation of soil microbial diversity, will enable the search and selection of active molecules to meet the challenges of antibiotic resistance
- The French ANR will fund the project's academic partners with a €2M grant
DEINOVE (Euronext Growth Paris: ALDEI), a French biotech company pioneering the exploration and exploitation of bacterial biodiversity to address the urgent and global challenge of antimicrobial resistance, announces that it has been selected with ESPCI Paris1 and INRAE2 for a project financed by the French National Agency for Research (ANR) through a 2 million-euros grant, following an extremely competitive selection process.
The Microflu4AMR project is one of the 11 winners selected - out of over 130 applications - within the national priority research program (PRP) on antibiotic resistance by an international jury chaired by Professors Herman Goossens, Benedikt Huttner, Rafael Canton and comprising 25 world-class experts3.
Microflu4AMR is complementary to DEINOVE’s Deinodrop and Boost-ID projects, the latter of which was recently selected as part of the France Relance call for proposals (where 10% of industrial projects were selected)4.
Boost-ID and Microflu4AMR were submitted under separate calls for proposals, with independent, demanding, and highly selective evaluation processes. The evaluations reached the same conclusion: the microfluidic technology developed by DEINOVE is considered by the scientific and industrial community as a major asset for the screening and identification of new therapeutic solutions from bacterial biodiversity.
Antibiotic resistance has become a major public health emergency that is now mobilizing the entire international community5, and of course France. Discovery of new antibiotics is therefore crucial to address this urgent challenge.
In this regard, the Microflu4AMR project will actually:
- Increase knowledge on soil microbial communities allowing the analysis and selection of soil samples based on their potential for the discovery of new active antibiotic molecules,
- Develop and implement a high-throughput system at the single-cell level for the sorting of antibiotic-producing bacteria from the aforementioned pre-selected soil samples.
“We are delighted to have been selected as part of the highly demanding Antibiotic resistance program and to be able to pursue our technological developments in microfluidics with the prestigious teams at ESPCI Paris and INRAE”, said Alexis Rideau, CEO of DEINOVE. “Combined with DEINOVE’s cutting-edge expertise in synthetic biology, microfluidics open up tremendous opportunities for screening at an unprecedented rate (with a throughput of up to one million bacteria tested per hour), whilst drastically reducing costs (reagents) and environmental impact (plastics)”.
ABOUT DEINOVE
DEINOVE is a French biotechnology company pioneering the exploration of a new domain of life, unexplored at 99.9%: the “microbial dark matter”. By revealing the metabolic potential of rare bacteria or still classified as uncultivable, it tackles a global health and economic challenge: antimicrobial resistance. The new therapies discovered and developed by DEINOVE target superbugs (microbes that have become resistant to one or more antimicrobials) that cause life-threatening infections which are now spreading at high speed.
This breakthrough approach gave rise to one of the world’s first specialized micro-biotechnology platforms and a unique collection of nearly 10,000 rare strains and thousands of bacterial extracts. Today, DEINOVE is conducting several development programs, of which its first antibiotic candidate is currently evaluated in a Phase II clinical trial in severe Clostridioides difficile infections, one of the world’s first emergencies. The Company has also developed new bacterial micro-factories that address the other issue in the race against antimicrobial resistance: the industrial production of these rare and low concentrated compounds with often too complex chemical structures to be generated by chemical synthesis.
Located at the heart of the Euromedecine park in Montpellier, DEINOVE has been listed on EURONEXT GROWTH® (ALDEI – code ISIN FR0010879056) since 2010. The Company has over 50 employees and relies on a network of world-class academic, technological, industrial and institutional partners.
ABOUT THE ANTIOBIOTICS RESISTANCE CALL FOR PROJECTS: “UNDERSTAND, INNOVATE, ACT”
Launched in January 2020 for a 10-year6 period, the priority research program (PRP) on antibiotic resistance has the following objectives: to set up an ambitious research program bringing together all French forces, to propose new public health strategies and control measures aiming to reduce and optimize the use of antibiotics in human and veterinary medicine and ultimately reverse the resistance curve, in line with international policies.
The Antibiotic resistance “understand, innovate, act” call for proposals7 launched under the guidance of ANR is the operational component of this PRP. It aims to support “very ambitious, structuring, long-term (3 to 6 years) research projects favoring interdisciplinarity and contributing to the emergence of synergies between different types of research (fundamental, environmental, clinical, translational), with the goal of stimulating and supporting the emergence of diagnostic, preventive and therapeutic innovations, and ultimately leading to a better use of antibiotics”.
CONTACTS
| Investors Mario Alcaraz Chief Financial and Administrative Officer +33 (0)4 48 19 01 00 [email protected] Media ATCG Partners – Marie PUVIEUX +33 (0)9 81 87 46 72 / +33 (0)6 10 54 36 72 [email protected] |
1 Advanced School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry in Paris
2 National Research Institute for agriculture, food and nutrition, and the environment
3 https://anr.fr/fileadmin/aap/2020/selection/ia-aap-ppr-amr-2020-jury.pdf
4 See press release March 10, 2021
5 Carlet Report https://solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/rapport_antibiotiques.pdf
6 https://solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/actualites/presse/communiques-de-presse/article/coup-d-envoi-du-programme-prioritaire-de-recherche-sur-l-antibioresistance-429001
7 https://anr.fr/fr/detail/call/antibioresistance-comprendre-innover-agir-appel-a-projets-2020/
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