Deinove creates an antibiotics subsidiary
Deinobiotics will accelerate research and development of new antibiotics
Deinove, a French specialist in Deinococcus bacteria used in the development of antibiotics, biofuels and green chemistry, is to accelerate the development of its antibiotics programme by establishing a dedicated subsidiary called Deinobiotics.
Deinove is giving the new company the intellectual property rights to research undertaken on antibiotics as well as the transfer of the €0.7m OSEO-ERDF-LR region funding already allocated to the programme.
Deinove will own 49% of the shares, while the majority shareholder, with 51%, is the Holding Incubator Green Chemistry, which has invested €500,000.
This capital injection and the state aid already allocated will fund Deinobiotics until a first drug candidate has been identified and value created for Deinove. Deinove has the option to buy back, at a pre-determined price, all the shares in Deinobiotics sold to the Holding Incubator Green Chemistry.
Deinobiotics will have a dedicated management team led by Alain Chevallier as President, a former Chief Financial Officer of Sanofi-Aventis, and Dominique Le Beller as Chief Executive, formerly Head of Biochemistry within the infectious diseases division of Aventis and one of the founders of Novoxel, a start-up specialising in the development of antibiotics.
Le Beller said: ‘The priority is now to find antimicrobial agents active against antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Deinove's research selected 12 strains of bacteria with antibiotic activity, including 9 strains active on Gram-negative bacteria and 2 broad spectrum strains. These first results are extremely promising for the future of deinobiotics.’
Deinove’s priority is to focus its energy and resources on the Deinol (biofuels) project and increasingly also on Deinochem (green chemistry).
