This KEDGE Alumnus announces a treatment that is effective against Alzheimer’s!

AmyPore is a business that was incubated at KEDGE’s Business Nursery located on the Marseille campus. It’s the first business supported by KEDGE that has obtained financing from the European Commission through its Horizon 2020 programme.

This permits AmyPore to continue its advancement in creating very first effective treatment for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, presented at the 3rd International Congress of Neurology and Treatment in Madrid.

AmyPore, an innovative company created by a KEDGE graduate

Driss Fantini, a graduate of the KEDGE Grande Ecole Program, is the founder of AmyPore, a biotechnology company. AmyPore designs and develops innovative therapeutic peptides with the aim of improving the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and the clinical outcome of patients.

"This patented drug is the result of research by my parents and their team at the University of Aix-Marseille. To speed up the process, my parents got the intellectual property rights of the drug, which gave me the idea of creating AmyPore. The Project was born at KEDGE, on the advice of Professor Maddalone and the Business Nursery, who guided me from the start.” Excerpt from our interview with Driss Fantini, AmyPore founder.

KEDGE's support in the development of AmyPore

AmyPore is entitled to receive support through the KEDGE Entrepreneurship programme, whose mission is to support entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity through support systems, training, and an ecosystem that includes all types of stakeholders on its campuses and territories (Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux, Toulon, Dakar, and Suzhou). These aids can accommodate several hundred projects and cover all stages of development: pre-incubation ("Pro Acts"), incubation ("Business Nursery") and acceleration ("Business Accelerator").

"We had to move fast. The Business Nursery gave me access to a specialised law firm that let me set up the company very quickly. I also had access to a wealth of advice and contacts that cover all the business plans of a company, which turned out to be invaluable in developing a true entrepreneurial view. ", explained Driss.

Entrepreneurship is one of KEDGE's main development strategies. The school offers spaces dedicated to innovation on its campuses (500m² in Marseille, 350m² in Bordeaux, 400m² in Paris and soon in Dakar), as well as provides access to a network of investors to financially support projects led by members of the KEDGE community.

AmyPore has demonstrated that its molecule AmyP53 is totally non-toxic!

The final minor validation steps will be completed quickly so that clinical trials with patients can begin in 2020. Due to its unique mode of action and non-toxicity, Amyp53 offers all the guarantees for rapid development in humans, as required by the therapeutic urgency.

Resulting from more than 15 years of academic research that runs against the mainstream, AmyP53 is well on its way to rapidly offer a solution to patients.

The company's goal is to become a pharmaceutical biotech in the field of therapeutic peptides focused on indications for proteinopathies for which there is a strong therapeutic need (Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ALS, type 2 diabetes). AmyPore is a pioneer in the development of inhibitors that target amyloid pores. The company's expertise in the field of peptide design will enable it to forge alliances with leading biopharmaceutical companies interested in this innovative approach. After more than 15 years of academic research against mainstream approaches, our inventors, Prof. N. YAHI (92 scientific articles; H-index: 42, on PubMed) and Pr. J. FANTINI (190 scientific articles; H-index: 54) have discovered and patented the most promising solution for treating Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Their research has been supported and validated by two Nobel Prize winners and one Lasker Prize winner. AmyPore has an exclusive 15-year licence to develop this solution, now called "AmyP53". It is a chimeric peptide (Alzheimer's / Parkinson's) generated by an innovative strategy of artificial intelligence applied to molecular neuroscience.

AmyPore

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