ImmuPharma extends research capabilities via French connection

UK-based drug discovery firm ImmuPharma (LSE: IMM) has extended its research capabilities by setting up its own research team within the Institut Europeen de Chimie et Biologie in Bordeaux (IECB), an international and interdisciplinary research team incubator, placed under the joint authority of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), INSERM (Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale) and the University of Bordeaux.

Additionally, one of ImmuPharma's fully owned subsidiaries, UREKA, a pharmaceutical R&D unit, has its new internal research team based at the IECB. ImmuPharma recently announced at its preliminary results that the long standing collaboration with the CNRS under Gilles Guichard and UREKA had resulted in the filing of a new co-owned patent controlling a breakthrough peptide technology called Urelix, allowing in essence to mimic long natural peptides especially in the configuration used to bind their receptor and improve their stability to enzymatic degradation (breakdown of peptides into aminoacids) as well as greater efficacy. ImmuPharma has filed the patents covering the Urelix peptide technology platform.

Diabetes is first therapeutic target

The first therapeutic area being targeted is diabetes (with GLP1 and GIP as targets). Blocking the protein/protein interaction could also be used in fighting viruses (blocking virus entry into cells) which could be further investigated. The potential of this technology is substantial and diverse and is one of the key reasons UREKA has established its own research team (some provided from Dr Guichard's laboratory or from other prestigious Universities such as ETH Zurich) and working in close collaboration with Dr Guichard and his CNRS team.

Within this collaboration the IECB having its incubator on the campus of University of Bordeaux, has provided ImmuPharma with access to state of the art laboratories and a number of scientists. ImmuPharma's president and chief scientific officer, Dr Robert Zimmer, said: "We are delighted to have extended our research capabilities in setting up our own research team within the IECB laboratories in collaboration with the CNRS team of Dr Gilles. We have also filed the patents covering the unique peptide technology platform (Urelix).

"The utilization within our own premises, with the potential financial support of the French Aquitaine Region, will be integral to our ongoing strategy of keeping R&D costs low while focusing more on applied research. Importantly, the new discovery represents a powerful applied research engine to discover innovative and powerful medicines, mirroring the success ImmuPharma has already demonstrated with our patented peptide for Lupuzor," commented ImmuPharma's president and chief scientific officer Robert Zimmer.