Posted Sep 19, 2022, 10:45 AM
Genfit announced on Monday that it had entered into exclusive negotiations for the acquisition of the Swiss biotech Versantis. Located in Zurich, this small company of 8 people is the result of university research within the polytechnic school (ETH), around technologies from liposomes. This operation will go through the payment of an initial amount of 40 million euros, supplemented by conditional payments of more than 60 million depending on the phase 2 studies of the two main molecules of Versantis, VS 01 and VS 02, then its regulatory approval by health authorities.
Genfit thus gets its hands on two very promising molecules dedicated to acute decompression on cirrhosis (ACLF), a very serious disease with no therapy other than liver transplantation. This rare pathology nevertheless affects 137,000 patients a year in the United States, and probably more than 200,000 in Europe, a market valued at 4 billion dollars across the Atlantic and half on the Old Continent.
Six ongoing programs
As ACLF drives the influx of ammonia into the blood, Versantis’ drug candidates would bind and remove it via liposomes, offering the prospect of prolonged survival. “The two products could give three because they have different mechanisms and could possibly be combined”, imagines Pascal Prigent, director of Genfit, for whom the operation is unexpected: “We would never have been able to buy them back in normal times. Companies that would have financed themselves quite easily normally now have more difficulty in times of crisis”.
However, after very delicate years, Genfit has precisely large means after that At the end of 2021, Ipsen bought the rights of its molecule Eliafibranor, and returned to the capital (up to 8%). Focused on primary biliary cholangitis, an inflammatory disease of the liver, this molecule should obtain the results of its phase 3 in the second quarter of 2023, and aims, if successful, for marketing in 2025.
However, the Lille company, whose workforce has increased to 140 people between France and the United States, does not intend to increase external growth. “Now we need to fund the programs. However, with Versantis, we now have six in progress,” says Pascal Prigent.
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