The main business development stages: the business has first been through
the acquisition of the required assets for its development,
the technology, and so on.
then through the financing,
the construction of a technological platform, to carry out the engineering
of any genome; and then the transition between the use of that platform to
the products which were going to be directly directed to
different sectors of application: therapeutics, etc.
The six first months of the business have then been dedicated to the
negociation with the Institut Pasteur for the exclusive licenses on the
princeps patents, the most important in genome engineering; a lot of them
have been André Choulika's invention but a number of them came from other
inventors who where associated to the business and this strengthened
our approach with the Institut, which in turn had positive regards on the
implication of researchers in the creation of a spin-off; then
start-up within its premises.
In june 2000, with the Institut Pasteur, we have thus signed for these licenses,
incubation and a number of other additional elements.
From then on, the concern was to get the business financed.
And so we started to seek for a business angel, a family office
who is still stakeholder in the business, his name is Camille Vest,
and he knew the Institut Pasteur well, so the connection was rather natural
and he started to invest the first funds as early as November.
Then, we launched a fundraising for the venture capital.
The strategic mistake we might have made then was to think that we could
postpone the fundraising a little and we only took off in April 2001
to get enough time to collect scientific, commercial results,
sign the licenses, etc. thinking this would mean a better
position to go negotiate with the venture capital.
We ended up raising funds in a
particularly twisted period: from September 2001 on,
the venture capital markets became very difficult, we had lots of trouble
and it wasn't before May 30th, 2002 that we succeded in arranging our first
venture capital round table, with a Danish investor, BankInvest,
and French investors: AGF, Odyssée Venture and Edmond de Rothschild,
for a total of 16 million euros which had been agreed on part by part.
The timing we had calculated was not so fortunate.
We had dedicated the six first years of the business, to work from
these tiny molecular scissors that are the meganucleases found in
nature, to the development of a true custom molecular scissors
engineering plateform and be in capacity of,
when receiving someone saying: "I want to target this
gene in the human genome or in the genome of that other species" to
produce a custom molecular scissors for this very gene and this gene only.
This ability is the result of the absolutely remarkable work of our
scientific Director at that time and all his teams, Frédéric Pâques.
This led to 2006 when we were able, by the means of a long work,
by way of substantial expenses, but in a few months time we knew how
to produce molecular scissors, we had the platform, we had the ability.
The question was hence to know how to go from this platform and to
the product: were we to finance it with venture capital, again?
Or were we to switch to a financing mode such as the stock exchange?
This time we reflected backwards from the timing, we made the mistake
for the venture capital and we didn't have to replicate the mistake.
Instead we thought: is there a window for an initial public offering?
Is there an opportunity?
If so, let's assess if we can make it or not, rather than saying: let's
refine our project and wait for the next window if it ever happens.
We made a good decision and it was to hire the new financial manager then,
Marc Le Bozec, who had been a biotechnologies entrepreneur before,
he thus knew the subject, besides his recognised HEC and financial pedigree.
So we managed to list the business very quickly:
He joined in October 15th, February 7th we were listed on Alternext, in Paris.
It allowed the venture capitalist's exit which was good for them after all,
but also to enter a entirely new category and finance the business
on the stock exchange, in a much more flexible way.
With the stock exchange's hazards too,
and we live with it; That's what it's like to marry the stock exchange.
From this moment, the businss has rather worked to apply its
technology to where it coud make a strategic difference,
and where it could create huge value: in which case would the genome
engineering of a cell or a species set up a new deal?
So there is the therapeutic area,
production of very important therapeutic sub-tools.
There is the agricultural area: where we realised that being able to remove the
genes rather than just adding transgenes to the plants would change things;
then were the scopes of application for tools and services more focused on
research as well as on material,
production, energy, which used to be more ancillary.
The business development at that time was about exploring areas in
which were going to be able to apply this technology, and how this platform
was going to deliver the products or services, and to which clients.
We went very far in the exploration: for the tools and services for instance
we went as far as purchasing the historical European leader in stem cells,
Cellartis in Sweden, then we tried applying this
technology in that very area to, well, combine
genome engineering with global cell engineering.
The company had been distributed, almost even scattered if I may say,
over many areas to try
to find in which we would stand out
and get products with high added value.
In 2013, there was a pretty violent turnaround on the tools and services
area, which caused our investments to no longer be profitable
on a short term, but to fall into a very long term logic.
We felt a real shock in this branch of the business
and we retired from this area at the end of 2013
to focus on two other areas, which concurrently had begun
to work very well and have had true successes: the area of
the immune system cells engineering to cure cancer,
the cancer immunotherapy; where our Americain competitors had
gotten spectacular results over the year
because they had a different approach in genome engineering from ours,
and were intrinsically a little limited,
whereas we were having a much more powerful medication approach,
in our viewpoint at least, and which nature was, potentially,
to set a new, longer and more difficult deal, but this really did transport us.
In the plants area, we have had outstanding first results,
with on fields results on soya, potatoes and other species.
Late 2013, we retired from the sector of tools and services
and the company had finally found its path.
It has found the way to apply this technology on a short term,
its main focus; naturally there may numerous other applications,
but we chose to start up on this one.
And today it's a company which applies its technology to immune system
engineering to cure cancers
and which maintains its activities in the plants area as we developed it.
And all through the second phase fundings are made from the stock exchange
through secondary offers or offers from private equity.
In 2014, this acceleration has materialised in an outstanding way:
we have signed two agreemets with pharma industrials which, again
have taken us to the next level; in February, we signed up
with a French business with which we had longstanding relationship
the Servier laboratories, to develop cancer immunotherapy
products, approximately on their targets; and in June, we signed with Pfizer,
is a global giant, to develop products with them and this is historically
the second biggest pre-clinical deal of all times ever signed
between a pharma and a biotech. They invested a 80 millions dollars funds,
additionally they purchased a stake, they finance our R&D and development.
There lies a real drive to apply technology.
If we want to anticipate further and try to envisage what this
will look like in ten years, we must be able to develop our products
portofolio in a clinic, and even onto the market.
Will this be achieved via our partners who have the required finances
to support the most costly up front developments, or will it come
from our own choices and fundings, either in raising additional funds
or using the money our partners
will pay us to do it on our own for one, two, or three products?
I could not tell, but in any case there is one sure thing: in 10
years, we will have gathered a true, shelved, cellular products portofolio
capable, in our viewpoint, of changing the future of tumors particularly
leuckaemias, lymphomas, very dangerous things,
or especially agressive cancers, and which will go through
clinical development but will also already have marketed products.
This is our vision in 10 years.
Romain BeaumeChargé Mission chaire MIX
Etienne KriegerAffiliate Professor
