Reports of Pierre Fabre's pharma death greatly exaggerated? Cancer mAb R&D to continue
The privately-owned firm announced 551 job cuts on Wednesday, telling Cosmetics Design-Europe underperformance by its drug R&D unit, generic competition and Government price cuts had prompted it to focus on its make-up business in Asia and the US.
The plan – which will see 272 drug R&D staff in France and 17 in Spain lose their jobs by 2016 – was reported elsehwere as a move away from pharmaceuticals.
This take – while true in general – rather ignores the fact Pierre Fabre will keep developing biopharmaceutical cancer treatments.
In a translated statement the firm said revitalizing its R&D operations “involves refocusing its resources on more targeted therapeutic areas with return profiles complementary investment: oncology neuropsychiatry and dermatology.”
This was reiterated by a spokeswoman, who told BioPharma-Reporter.com "we will continue our research in oncology which is one of our three targeted R&D therapeutic areas, as well as our licensing agreement with Aurigene for a new cancer therapeutic in immuno‐oncology, AUNP12."
According to the firm the oncology unit will create “new biotechnology entities,” although no specific details have been disclosed.
Cancer mAb pedigree
Pierre Fabre has been developing monoclonal antibodies at its immunology centre in Saint-Julien-en-Genevois for a decade. In 2004, it teamed up with US drugmaker Merck & Co to develop an insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) receptor targeting molecule called, F50035.
The drug, which is also called dalotuzumab or MK-0646, is being trialled a treatment for solid tumours. It was listed as an active Phase II candidate in the US drugmaker’s pipeline in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing in February.
In 2010, Pierre Fabre licensed a second monoclonal antibody, h224G11, this time signing up Abbott Laboratories (now named Abbvie) as its development partner.
The drug, which targets the cMet protein key to resistance development in prostate, lung and gastric cancers, is also known as ABT-700 and is currently being assess in Phase I studies according to a post on Clinicatrials.gov.
More recently, Pierre Fabre’s oncology unit partnered with India’s Aurigene to develop an immune-oncology peptide. The collaboration, announced in February, is focused on AUNP12 (mentioned above), which is an immune-modulatory compound that targets the PD-1 pathway.
AUNP12 is part of a new class of so called immune checkpoint inhibitors that target the PD-1, or programmed cell death pathway. Such compounds have attracted a lot of attention based on data which suggests they can achieve a higher response rate in certain cancers.
