TcL Pharma to receive a €2.2-million grant from the French National Research Agency

25-08-2009: TcL Pharma, a biotech company dedicated to the discovery and the development of drugs which regulate the immune system in organ & tissue transplantation and autoimmune disease, has announced that it is to receive a €2.2-million grant from the French National Research Agency (ANR) just weeks after having raised €1 million in equity financing as part of France's TEPA economic stimulus package and thanks to institutional investors such as Algest, who has been following the company since its launch.

The TOLESTIM project ("Long-acting CD28 antagonists for improved tolerance in transplantation") has been selected for a €2.2 million grant under the ANR's 2009, for a global budget of 5.2 M€ "Collaborative Research in Healthcare Biotech" program ("BiotecS").

The immunosuppressants currently administered after organ transplantation are effective but can induce severe side effects - the nephrotoxicity and cardiotoxicity observed for calcineurin inhibitors (such as the cyclosporins), for example. A major goal in transplantation medicine is to reduce the dose of immunosuppressants by inducing immune tolerance. In collaboration with the INSERM U643 lab (which has developed a innovative approach to immunosuppression, based on selective CD28 antagonists), TcL Pharma will seek to develop an industrial-scale biomanufacturing process, confirm the CD28 antagonists' immunomodulatory effect in non-human primates and prepare the ground for Phase I and IIa clinical trials in healthy volunteers and kidney transplant patients.