BioAlliance Pharma awarded €2 million in funding to study Lauriad mucoadhesive technology

Mar 5 2011

BioAlliance Pharma SA (Paris:BIO) (Euronext Paris-BIO), a company dedicated to the supportive care and treatment of cancer patients, today announced the award of €2 million in funding over 30 months from the « Fond Unique Interministériel » (a French program supporting collaborative research projects) including an amount of €743,000 specifically allocated to BioAlliance Pharma. This program aims at establishing the proof of concept for the administration by mucosal route of biological products. The first application is a peptide benefiting from the delivery properties of the Lauriad™ mucoadhesive technology.

This program will also permit to test the Lauriad™ technology in the veterinary area.

This collaborative program, co-labelled by both « Clusters of excellence » Medicen Paris Region and Atlanpôle, aims at designing a flu vaccine administered by mucosal route.

The consortium is led by BioAlliance Pharma and involves several academic centers and industrial partners:

• The « Laboratoire de Virologie et Pathologies Humaines VirPath » (Lyon), headed by Pr. Bruno Lina, National flu reference center.
• The « Laboratoire EA 401 Matériaux et Produits de Santé », headed by Pr. Pierre Tchoreloff from Paris XI University, specialized in optimization of peptide formulations.
• Sogeval, a French veterinary drug company, which develops, produces, and markets veterinary products. It has developed a range of pet drugs, particularly in infectiology. The involvement of Sogeval could open the path to new opportunities for the Lauriad™ muco-adhesive technology in the veterinary area.
• Gredeco, founded by Pr. Lofti Ben Slama (Paris), will be in charge of the studies on peptide mucous penetration.
• Pr Pierre Dellamonica's team, from Nice University Hospital, worldwide known for its expertise in infectiology, will be in charge of immunological assessment prior to entry into clinical phase.

« This program is capitalizing on the Lauriad™ patented mucoadhesive technology, already validated with chemical molecules for Loramyc^® and Sitavir^®. This substantial public grant will open the path to new application fields with complex biological products and new potential markets", stated Dominique Costantini, CEO of BioAlliance Pharma.