BIO2016: French Firm Biose to Open U.S. HQ in Cambridge to Look for Partners

BIO2016: French Firm Biose to Open U.S. HQ in Cambridge to Look for Partners June 10, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Biose, a French microbiotics company, plans to set up a U.S. headquarters in Cambridge to foster partnerships and relationships with companies to aide in the development its microbiome therapeutics, the Boston Business Journal reported this morning.

The U.S. home for Biose, which is based in Clermont-Ferrand in central France, will be in the Cambridge Innovation Center. Founded in 1999, the Cambridge Innovation Center has served as a launching pad for numerous startups—something Maxence Desjonquères, Biose’s chief executive officer, was looking for in a new space.

Desjonquères made his announcement about the U.S. office during the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) annual convention in San Francisco. As it stands now, Desjonquères will be the only Biose employee based in the United States, the Business Journal said.

“From a business perspective, (the Boston area) is one of the leaders worldwide for the biotech and pharmaceutical industry, with all of the potential partners we need to develop and advance our R&D projects,” Desjonquères said, as the Journal reported.

Currently Biose’s website is undergoing a revamping, so there is little information about its pipeline posted, however its new Cambridge, Mass. address is listed on the site. The company said a new site will be up and running at the end of June. Still, the Journal noted Biose has been around for about 50 years and has been working on therapeutics in fields of gynecology, infectology and gastroenterology, which are marketed in Europe and parts of Asia. In its report, the Journal said Biose says it has more than 15 drugs in development for “diseases including clostridium difficile infection, necrotizing enterocolitis, metformin associated diarrhea and recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis, all of which have reached the human proof-of-concept stage and are ready for licensing.”

Biose is the latest in a string of companies to announce intentions of establishing a presence in Cambridge and the Kendall Square area. Last month, Paris-based Enterome Bioscience SA, which is developing therapies and diagnostics focused on the gut microbiome, announced it was opening an office in Kendall Square, a white hot square mile of real estate that has become the heart of the Boston—area pharma hub. Much like what Biose is hoping to do, Enterome said it was looking to network with U.S. companies for potential partnerships.

Cambridge’s Kendall Square area, which makes up approximately one square mile, is packed with biotech representatives, including Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Company , Amgen , GlaxoSmithKline , Takeda Pharmaceuticals , Sanofi , Biogen Idec, Inc. and Novartis AG . There are also a plethora of other cutting-edge companies, such as Alnylam and bluebird bio. One of the reasons for the greater Boston area becoming such a major hub in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries is the plethora of research universities in the area. Boston also has one of the highest educated workforces in the nation. The close proximity of so many pharmaceutical and university laboratories provides researchers and scientists easy access to clinical studies and building partnerships between companies.

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