Paris, March 16, 2009 – BioAlliance Pharma SA (Euronext Paris: BIO), the specialty
pharmaceutical company focused on the treatment of opportunistic infections in cancer and
AIDS, today announced the award of €6.4 million in funding from OSEO (the French state
innovation agency). The company will devote the funds to the development of its novel
therapeutic entities for the treatment of invasive cancers.
The funding has been awarded to the "Cancer Anti-invasive Program" (CAP) private-public
consortium as part of OSEO's Strategic Industrial Innovation scheme. The consortium (led by
BioAlliance Pharma) comprises two innovative SMEs (Oroxcell and Xentech), two mid-sized
companies (Novasep and CIT) - all of which will make project investments - and two
academic centers of excellence (the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan and the Institut
Gustave Roussy). The consortium's total budget over 5 years is €9.9 million, including a
number of grants-in-aid and repayable advances.
The collaborative program will enable the development of two very innovative therapeutic
products up to the commercialization phase: AMEPTM (a biotherapy indicated in invasive
melanoma) and a first-in-class anticancer drug that targets invasive cancers and makes
tumor cells revert to a normal phenotype.
In parallel, the consortium will develop innovative animal models of invasive cancers with
Xentech, highly predictive genotoxicity tests with Oroxcell and immunotoxicology tools with
CIT. Novasep will develop an R&D-phase pilot facility for generating highly potent active
ingredients (HPAIs). In collaboration with BioAlliance Pharma, the academic centers of
excellence will identify new markers for monitoring tumor invasion.
Dominique Costantini (BioAlliance Pharma's President and CEO) emphasized: "This is a
significant amount of public funding and constitutes a major boost for the clinical
development of two of our high-added-value projects. All the consortium partners have
committed to infrastructure investments and the program will provide highly innovative
support for an industrial drug development pipeline".
About BioAlliance Pharma
As a preferred partner for hospital-based specialists, BioAlliance Pharma is a specialty biopharmaceutical
company which develops and markets innovative products, especially in the fields of opportunistic infections
and chemotherapy complications. In areas where medical needs are insufficiently met, our targeted approaches
help overcome drug resistance and improve patient health & quality of life. BioAlliance Pharma’s ambition is to
become a leading European player in these fields by coupling innovation to patient needs.
For more information, visit the BioAlliance Pharma web site at http://www.bioalliancepharma.com.
About OSEO’s Strategic Industrial Innovation program
OSEO's Strategic Industrial Innovation program (known by its French acronym, ISI) promotes the emergence of
European champions. It supports innovative, ambitious, industry-oriented, collaborative projects which are led
by mid-sized companies (less than 5000 employees) or SMEs (less than 250 employees) and progress state-ofthe-
art technologies. When successful, these projects have very promising outputs, since they seek to
commercialize innovations based on technological breakthroughs which would not have been developed in the
absence of public funding. Funds are allocated in the form of grants and loans ranging from €3 million to €10
million. Eighteen such projects received ISI funding in 2008.
Disclaimer
This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements concerning BioAlliance Pharma SA
and its business. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could
cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of BioAlliance Pharma SA to be materially
different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.
BioAlliance Pharma SA is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward looking
statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For a discussion of risks and
uncertainties which could cause actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of BioAlliance Pharma SA
to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, please refer to the Risk Factors ("Facteurs de Risque")
section of the reference document approved by the AMF on April 11 2008 under the number R. 08-021, which is available on
the AMF website (http://www.amf-france.org) or on BioAlliance Pharma S.A.'s website (http://www.bioalliancepharma.com).