How to prepare for bioterrorism threats and upcoming deadly viruses? The small Lyon laboratory Fabentech was selected to build a “shield” with broad-spectrum antidotes, in order to protect France but also Europe.
“When we talk about health risks, we are not in science fiction. The question is not if, but when,” says Laurent Muschel, general director of Hera, the authority for preparation and response to health emergencies which emerged after the Covid-19 crisis, visiting Fabentech on Monday.
The SME with 50 employees is the first to receive a loan from the European Investment Bank, of 20 million euros, as part of the European strategy to strengthen preparedness against biological threats.
It works hand-in-hand with governments, health organizations and the French military to develop emergency treatments against deadly viruses and toxins identified as major risks to public health.
“The authorities are on alert for a certain number of pathogens. They are asking manufacturers like us to have strategic stocks in advance, so as to be able to respond as soon as a threat emerges,” explains to AFP Sébastien Iva, president of Fabentech.
Thanks to this financial support, “an antitoxin which will make it possible to deal with a terrorist attack based on ricin, a poison which can be manufactured quite easily and which has already been the subject of certain attempts” should arrive on the market in 2025, reveals Mr. Muschel. Hera will then finance the storage of these products in undisclosed locations.
Two other antidotes are in less advanced development against plant toxins, in terms of biodefense.
Fabentech is also working on pharmaceutical responses to “emerging viruses with a much higher lethality rate than that of Covid”, such as the airborne Nipah virus, which is prevalent in South-East Asia, “a threat identified almost everywhere in the world. world given its case fatality rate of 60%.
It also attacks a whole family of viruses, sarbecoviruses, of which coronaviruses are a part, to be able to respond to future pandemics. The objective is to develop a treatment against eight viruses in this family, which will, according to its boss, amount to “stocking a single product for all of these infectious threats”.
The biotech also plans to relaunch or update a therapeutic program developed against avian flu and another, less advanced, for Ebola.
– Equine serum –
Fabentech technology remains the same for all these emergency solutions. It is based on broad-spectrum polyclonal antibodies which come from immunoglobins produced in horses to neutralize targeted viruses or toxins, even if they have mutated.
The company thus develops the antigen which it injects into horses whose immune systems will produce an enormous amount of immunoglobins.
It is in its industrial unit near Lyon, in Saint-Priest, that the product purification stage takes place in stainless steel tanks, so that it can be administered to humans.
Under an interweaving of ventilation pipes, small-scale production modules are installed, for research use for preclinical tests. Regarding manufacturing on a larger scale, the laboratory depends on larger structures.
Why the horse rather than another animal? “There has never been a disease transmitted from horses to humans. And since horses will produce a lot of blood, this allows a lot of treatments to be collected,” explains Mr. Iva.
Fabentech is counting on its new support from Europe to finance its current programs, invest in additional equipment in Saint-Priest, optimize its manufacturing process and plan “some recruitments”.
In competition with the Americans Siga Technologies and Emergent BioSolutions, the biopharmaceutical company, which anticipates a turnover of 10 million euros next year, is also seeking to find “additional capital” from private investors.
