A French bioinformatics SME seeking European research or technological partners for the development of new probiotics to treat diseases under technical or research cooperation agreement

The French SME, established in 2015 in France and in the US, prospects microbiomes to discover microbes imporving health and offers its expertise to develop probiotic products (living organism), to prevent diseases in relation to the microbiome and to enhance health and well-being. Many human and animal health scientists will nowadays agree that the microbiome offers as yet mostly unexplored opportunities for care, not only for acute and local diseases affecting the body sites harbouring microbes, but also for chronic and systemic disease. Using microbes (“bugs as drugs”) or their metabolites and existing pharmaceutical molecules (“drugs for bugs”) to modulate the microbiome composition has the potential to prevent or control the symptoms of autoimmunity, chronic inflammation, metabolic syndromes, stress and cognitive decline, infectious disease and improve immuno-oncology treatment. Recent advances in DNA sequencing technology and Artificial Intelligence allow for unprecedented resolution of the composition of microbiota in cohorts of clinical relevance. The potential of qualified presumtion of safety (QPS) strains, which means that they are recognized as safe, suited for probiotic composition to compete with pathogens such as Clostridium difficile, Fusobacterium nucleatum (colorectal cancer) and to modulate and shape the immune system is as yet largely unexplored. The French company has developed a methodology to formulate probiotic solutions, using human in vivo observation as the starting point and a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) consisting in a proprietary discovery platform using bioinformatics algorithms. Its expertise gathers: experiment and samples management, DNA sequences analysis, microbiota sequencing using Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies, bioinformatic analysis, secured storage of results. The company already offers studies in the form of data analysis deliveries to clients (private and public laboratories) from probiotics and pharmaceutics sectors (in France, Europe and US), searching to use Next Generation Sequencing technologies to develop biomarkers and diagnosis based on microbiota. Nowadays, the company has developed several probiotic compositions for prevention and treatment of several diseases. The company has achieved selection of competent QPS (Qualified presumption of safety) species for Clostridium difficile infection prevention, Pediatric allergy prevention and Colorectal cancer prevention, and has identified the associated mechanism of action. The company aims to start in vitro assays for optimal strain selection. The company is looking for partners (SMEs or R&D Institutions) from the probiotics, pharmaceutical or health sectors to develop new probiotics products intended to be introduced on the market for the treatment of several diseases related to the microbiome : SMEs, research institutions, industrial partners expected to work on activities such as isolation of new QPS strains, use of existing QPS strains and product formulation, testing, clinical evaluation, commercialisation of new probiotics. Research cooperation or technical cooperation agreements are sought. The company is also open to collaborate in projects funded by European programmes like Eurostars. Since the probiotic industry is largely developed in Northern Europe, the company ideal targets would be partners from these countries.