Project description
Development platform for efficient drug repurposing
Acute respiratory tract infections are a major public health concern worldwide. They are associated with hundreds of known viruses and bacterial coinfections, yet vaccines and few treatments exist only for influenza and respiratory syncytial viruses. French start-up Signia is developing an approach to combat emerging infections globally by creating a platform for antimicrobial treatments via repurposing approved drugs and repositioning unsuccessful pharma pipeline candidates. The strategy is focussing on targeting the global response of the patient's organism instead of a specific molecular determinant of the pathogen. The EU-funded Signia project aims to develop the full capability of the platform and proceed with the clinical validation of the optimised nebulised Diltiazem as the drug candidate repurposed to target influenza infection.
Objective
Pharma industry is facing the challenge of high-cost and time-consuming processes for de novo drug development (€1-2 billion and 10-17 years per marketed drug), also influenced by high failure rates (only 10% of drug candidates are approved for market entry). As a result, an increasing number of firms seek alliances based on repurposing existing drugs for new indications to deliver the needed productivity increases, shifting the focus of R&D to smaller biotech companies.
Among all infectious diseases, acute respiratory tract infections are the main source of acute diseases worldwide with over 17.5B deaths per year, notably killing newborns and young children. They are caused by over 200 viruses and handful virus-bacteria coinfections; however, today we only have vaccines and few treatments for Influenza and respiratory syncytial virus.
Signia is a French start-up offering a disruptive solution to combat these emerging infections globally; a drug development platform for next-generation antimicrobial treatments, by repurposing ready-marketed drugs and repositioning unsuccessful pharma pipelines candidates. Signia strategy involves a complete paradigm shift, based on targeting the global response of the host cell instead of a specific molecular determinant of the pathogen.
Our innovation will not only give rise to better treatments against respiratory infections and significant shortening of response time to widespread outbreaks, but also will enable both a rapid transition of drugs from the pipeline to the market and a rapid return of investment for pharmas.
Phase 2 will let us reach the full capability of our platform and the clinical validation of the optimized nebulized Diltiazem, our drug candidates at the most advanced stage of validation as repurposed host-targeted inhibitor of influenza infection. We forecast €31M revenues (with a ROI of 9.72 with a corresponding EBITDA of 70.51% after 5 years in the market) and increase our company´s workforce to 14.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacydrug discovery
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologyvirology
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesinfectious diseasesRNA virusesinfluenza
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacypharmaceutical drugsvaccines
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementemployment
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
69100 Villeurbanne
France
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.