[Update August 6th, 2015] A month after its Initial Public Offering in Paris, Biophytis just announced that the company raised an extra €6 million from a North-American investor. This fresh money is joining the €10 million successfully raised by the French biotech on July 8th, 2015.
Original article published on June 26th, 2015:
The Parisian biotech Biophytis files for an Initial Public Offering in the City of Lights. The company is looking for enough money to progress its two leading compounds through the critical phase IIb trial.
Stock markets keep on embracing biotech companies. Biophytis will be listed on its local exchange to fund BIO201 and BIO203, its therapeutics for aging diseases. The candidates target sarcopenic obesity and age-related macular degeneration, respectively, both degenerative age-related diseases.
The drug candidates, molecules derived from the hemisynthesis of natural substances, are in the pre-clinical phase and should enter regulatory studies on humans during 2016, if everything goes according to Biophytis’ plan.
The young biotech has the most advanced candidates in the world on the targeted indications, but is not alone in this field. For example, Bayer HealthCare and the Johns Hopkins University signed a couple of weeks ago a five-year agreement to study ophthalmic therapies, with a special focus on age-related macular degeneration. With the increase of life expectancy, over 2 billion people will be older than 60 years by 2050. As a result, pathologies caused by aging will be the healthcare challenge of the XXIst century.