Ipsen and BioMérieux Enter Into a Broad Partnership in Personalized Medicine

Ipsen and bioMérieux announced that they have entered into a partnership to create a global collaboration in theranostics, with a focus on hormone-dependent cancers. The two companies have signed a framework agreement to leverage their expertise and resources to develop a personalized approach to medicine based on Ipsen’s broad portfolio of innovative compounds and bioMérieux’s diagnostic tests.

Both companies will jointly identify programs that would benefit from the co-development of a therapeutic and a companion diagnostic test, notably in the prevention and treatment of prostate and breast cancers, neuro-endocrine tumors (NETs) and pituitary tumors.

This novel partnership emphasizes Ipsen’s and bioMérieux’s expertise in the emerging field of personalized medicine, a concept based on the systematic use of individual patient molecular information to tailor specific preventive and therapeutic solutions. The early development of companion diagnostic tests and innovative compounds may accelerate early clinical proof of concept and support the registration of Ipsen clinical drug candidates.

“We are very pleased to build this partnership with Ipsen, which has developed over the years a significant scientific and medical expertise. Our goal is to reinforce personalized medicine and contribute through this partnership to the novel paradigm in medicine, which is increasingly “patient-driven” rather than “diseasedriven”,” said Prof. Christian Bréchot, Vice President of Institut Mérieux, in charge of medical and scientific affairs, and member of the bioMérieux board.

Dr. Claude Bertrand, Executive Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer of Ipsen stated: “We are delighted to accelerate the deployment of our personalized medicine programs in oncology through this broad partnership with bioMérieux”. Claude Bertrand added: “The shared vision and the cross-company synergies represent a unique opportunity to leverage early stage co-development of innovative products and biomarkers for patient care.”

Theranostics, the development of innovative therapeutic agents with diagnostic companion tests (taking into account an individual’s genetics or tumor molecular profile) may be key to improve treatment efficacy and safety through the identification of potential responding patients as well as in monitoring the response to a treatment. The creation of the Ipsen / bioMérieux partnership reflects the visionary convergence of medical and information technologies to serve individual patient’s needs.

Theranostics offers a cutting-edge solution to optimize healthcare by making sure the best medicine is available to the right patients. It may also accelerate the time to market of new compounds through an improved selection of patients enrolled in clinical trials, thereby helping to address the global challenge of R&D productivity.

bioMérieux is committed to making personalized medicine a reality by building partnerships to develop theranostics for infectious diseases, cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Some collaborations include Ipsen, Merck & Co. and GSK.

bioMérieux has made a sustained investment in high medical value biomarkers through in-house R&D programs, licensing and research collaborations. Theranostics development also leverages bioMérieux's unique hybrid business strategy: the high complexity CLIA lab of its subsidiary, bioTheranostics, allied with bioMérieux's global IVD business, supports aggressive development timelines while ensuring test availability wherever the drug is sold.