Rhenovia signs partnership with AFM
To support its simulation technology for diseases of the nervous system
Rhenovia Pharma, a French biotechnology company specialising in treatments for diseases of the central and peripheral nervous system, has signed a two-year strategic partnership agreement with the French Muscular Dystrophy Association (AFM) worth more than €500,000.
This collaboration aims to speed up the development of Rhenovia’s technology for simulating neuronal transmission.
AFM will gain access to a speedier scientific approach for discovering new pharmacological treatments for rare neurodegenerative diseases. The agreement will also benefit pathologies that affect larger patient numbers, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
The Rhenovia platform is capable of reproducing experimental results on a computer and of predicting the effects of medicines whose efficacy can then be confirmed experimentally. The technology helps reduce costs because part of the research on animal models is replaced by computer studies. It also improves the success rate for drug candidates by taking account of physiological and pathological realities, and reduces the time to market.
Rhenovia is already making its technology available to the biopharmaceutical industry as a service or through partnerships. This enables companies to optimise their research and development into drugs for numerous central nervous system diseases, in particular through the discovery and validation of new therapeutic targets, in silico pharmacological characterisation, improvements in the efficacy of drug candidates, and the extension of patent protection for products on the market whose patents are about to run out.
The extension of Rhenovia’s technology will help create a new platform for application to peripheral nervous system diseases in general and diseases connected with a change in muscular plaque in particular (e.g. muscular dystrophy, lateral amyotrophic sclerosis and multiple sclerosis).
‘Our unique technology will enable research laboratories associated with the AFM to improve their efficiency and optimise their research costs. This agreement is a perfect illustration of the relevance and strength of our technology,’ said Serge Bischoff, chairman and ceo of Rhenovia Pharma.
‘This agreement with Rhenovia will enable us to speed up some of our research programmes and open up new avenues of research for rare diseases of the central and peripheral nervous system,’ added AFM’s scientific director Serge Braun.
