The CEO at OSE Immunotherapeutics (EPA:OSE) has an important contribution to the development of a cure for cancer.
“The lead compound or the lead program is a therapeutic cancer vaccine, meaning we use the technology of therapeutics vaccination to educate our immune system to recognize and kill cancer cells.
This program is now in Phase III pivotal trial in Europe, the U.S., Canada and the U.K. — there are 14 different countries involved.
We just got the green light from the FDA early this year, and recently we announced approval of the protocol in Europe.
This is maybe the most advanced therapeutic cancer vaccine already having positive data in the previous randomized trial in non-small cell lung cancer.
Non-small cell lung cancer is the second most common cancer.
Unfortunately, it’s 2 million people every year, the highest in terms of mortality.
So, there is a very high medical need, as you probably know, when the patients do not respond or lose response to the classic treatments, either chemotherapy or immunotherapy.
There is no treatment option registered so far.
And so, we are leading the space here where we explore the therapeutics vaccine in monotherapy in comparison to chemotherapy in metastatic patients, so very advanced cancer patients.
This is all for the first program.
The second program is a classic immunotherapy, and the technology is a monoclonal antibody — it’s a very classic technology now in the pharma world.
And we just this summer announced a positive readout, meaning positive efficacy results in inflammatory bowel disease, in particular, in ulcerative colitis.
Here again, it’s a very big market, IBD.
The inflammatory bowel market is a market of $25 billion in the next two or three years.
And just ulcerative colitis, which is one of the two big diseases in this area.
It’s more than 3 million patients every year in the developed countries.
It’s even more than lung cancer patients.
There is a very high medical need.
And so, we are really happy now with this positive result with a new antibody named lusvertikimab, where we were able to demonstrate that this molecule is efficient for patients.
And now, we are thinking of strategy for the next steps, how to move forward in this area where there is a lot of investment appetite from the large pharma companies.”
Nicolas Poirier is the CEO at OSE Immunotherapeutics.
Nicolas Poirier, CEO, OSE Immunotherapeutics
He has been Chief Scientific Director and member of the management team of OSE Immunotherapeutics since 2016.
He started his career at Tcl Pharma in 2009 as a researcher, became Project Manager at Effimune in 2012, then Director of R&D programs in 2014.
In addition, Mr. Poirier is an active member of the Strategic and Scientific Advisory Committee (COSSF) of the French biomedical industry association (MabDesign).
Over the past 15 years, he has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed international scientific publications and holds over 40 issued patents in the field of immunotherapy.
Mr. Poirier and his team have obtained more than 45 million euros in French and European public funding to co-finance OSE Immunotherapeutics’ research and development programs.
He holds a Ph.D. in immunology from the European Center for Transplantation and Immunotherapy Sciences, Nantes, masters’ degrees both in biotechnology from the University of Nantes and pharmacology from the University of Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, and a certification in global management from INSEAD.
OSE Immunotherapeutics also has created many strategic partnerships with larger pharmaceutical companies.
“AbbVie is really the first pharma in this market.
And we have licensed our patents for a new immunotherapy targeting chronic inflammation — it could be in the gut, in the lung, dermatology, and so on.
And so now this program will move into clinics with AbbVie, and we will pursue this program with them.
It’s a really important deal for us.
It’s a deal over $700 million in terms of upfront, plus future milestones, as well as tiered royalties.
And we received a $48 million upfront for preclinical compounds before entering in patients, which is quite high if we look at the benchmark.
So, this is a really important and strategic partnership for us.
We also have a second partnership with Boehringer Ingelheim, another pharma based in Germany, more for the oncology or cardio metabolic space or disease.
We also reaffirmed this partnership early this year.
We were paid more than EUR38 million during the extension of this partnership.
And they are conducting efficacy studies, Phase Ib studies in solid tumors, particularly in head and neck, as well as in Phase II in cardio-renal-metabolic diseases.
And finally, in this pillar, we also have a third partnership in the U.S., Veloxis, which is a company dedicated to transplant patients.
They already have one product registered in transplantation, and they’re evaluating one of our innovations in Phase II in kidney transplant patients.
In terms of the contracts, these three partnerships together are more than potentially $2 billion.
And we received more than EUR200 million in the last eight years.
So, it’s really significant for us.
It represents 80% of how we are financing the company.
We raised a little bit of equity on the public market, but the majority of our financing came from these large pharma deals.”
The biotech based in France has some interesting management issues because of its history.
“We’re a French company, so we are managed maybe differently from the U.S.
Let’s say we’re not a big biotech, we’re around 70-plus employees, nearly half in research, which illustrates that we are maybe very different from biotechs, where there is initially a big investment in the research phase and then they stop after having one or two compounds or programs and move to the development and clinical stage.
We continue to invest a lot in our research and innovations because we have a very good R&D engine that is highly productive and generates this new partnership with pharma.
And also, because in our DNA we are working for the patients, and we are fully aware that there will not be one or two magic bullets that will cure everybody.
We need to constantly innovate.
So, this is our DNA.
But on the other side, you may understand that we are leading the space on cancer vaccine technology.
We are launching a pivotal registration trial worldwide.
It’s North America and Europe.
It’s a very different culture, very different expertise and people.
And we have to manage a small company with these two extremes, from research to late-stage development.
I don’t know how we are doing that, but it is working quite well.”
Get the complete picture of this cancer vaccine company by reading the entire interview with Nicolas Poirier, the CEO at OSE Immunotherapeutics, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
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