Some French life sciences companies are using biotechnology to develop innovative new treatments for specific illnesses and have carved market niches for themselves in the process.

With assistance from governments on the national and local levels, bioscience parks across this country are building on France's long history in that field. 

Louis Pasteur, the microbiologist who invented a process of purification that keeps harmful bacteria out of wine (later applied to milk), hailed from Dole, France.

An institute in Paris that bears his name is where many research ideas blossom into the kinds of bio startup companies that are now sprouting throughout the country.

In the city of Lyon, a bioscience cluster called Lyon Biopole has emerged as an outgrowth of the city's historic role in the industrialization of vaccines, said Isabelle Scarabin, director of economic and international affairs for the cluster.

While showing GlobalAtlanta a new high-security infectiology lab that opened April 1, Ms. Scarabin said Lyon Biopole evolved around the influence of Charles Merieux, a student of Mr. Pasteur.

Mr. Merieux laid the groundwork for the mass production of vaccines that has kept populations around the world free from many formerly widespread infectious diseases like smallpox.

Ms. Scarabin and other representatives from Lyon Biopole and France's bioscience industry will travel to Atlanta in May for the 2009 BIO International Convention. 

GlobalAtlanta traveled to France to report on some of the nearly 100 French companies and organizations that will exhibit there. 

Lyon Biopole companies are looking for partners and investors especially in research and development that might want to participate in the cluster's goal to develop "personalized" treatments, Ms. Scarabin said.

"We're trying to do more and more specific medicines for each person. Each patient is unique and each patient will not answer like his neighbor to the same treatment," she said.

Genzyme Corp. is a testament to the economic potential that these kinds of niche health products promise.  A Cambridge, Mass.-based company, Genzyme entered Lyon when it purchased a company based there.

During each of the last three years, Genzyme has posted at least 20 percent growth, said Pascal Reber, Genzyme’s vice president and general manager for industrial operations in France. The company has outgrown its current Lyon facility and is building a brand new $105 million building in Lyon Biopole with room for further expansion.

A variety of factors make Lyon a good place for Genzyme to continue developing the specialized product, Mr. Reber said during an interview with GlobalAtlanta at the company's temporary facility.

Lyon is the second largest metropolitan area in France but is considerably smaller than Paris, the country’s sprawling capital.  Its size and scientific environment provide ample networking opportunities for life sciences companies.

“The city of Lyon’s efforts are really pushing toward having a strong, vibrant network, so a lot of activities are organized so that companies meet up with research scientists from the universities,” said Thierry de Lumley, director of the life sciences business unit of the Lyon Area Economic Development Agency.

In its Lyon operation, Genzyme produces a compound called thymoglobulin, which is used to suppress a patient's immune system during organ transplant surgery.

Genzyme makes its immunosuppressant drug by injecting rabbits with a type of human white blood cells known as T lymphocytes, which aid the body’s immune response. 

The rabbits, raised on farms near Lyon, are specially bred to be certifiably free of pathogens and are kept in totally sterile environments.  They naturally develop an antibody against the white blood cells, which is extracted from their blood and used as the active ingredient in the drug, Mr. Reber said.

Another Lyon company is using blood cells in an innovative way.  ERYtech Pharma uses a patented machine to encapsulate medication or enzymes into red blood cells, which become "vehicles" to efficiently transport the healing agent throughout the patient’s body.

The machines use pressure to stretch the cell membrane wide enough for the therapeutic molecules to fit inside. Once they're in, pressure in the other direction snaps the membrane back to its normal shape, entrapping the medication.

ERYtech keeps commonly used drugs on hand, and in about two hours its machines can create the compound, which can be quickly shipped to hospitals around the world.

The company focuses on oncology, with applications for leukemia and pancreatic cancer.

ERYtech Chief Operating Officer and co-founder Pierre-Olivier Goineau said delivering medication using the red blood cell is more effective than ingestion by pill or injection by needle.

It also has been shown to reduce allergic reactions and side effects significantly, which improves the patient’s quality of life and the effectiveness of the treatment, he said.

That said, ERYtech’s product is not a cure or even a new drug, only a better way to deliver existing treatments, he said.

“We are just a small step,” Mr. Goineau told GlobalAtlanta.  To illustrate, he used the example of a pancreatic cancer patient, whose life outlook might increase from six to nine months using ERYtech’s product over traditional drug delivery mechanisms.

Still there is financial potential in that step.  Mr. Goineau said his company raised about 12 million euros in capital in 2006 and has relatively low operating costs for a pharmaceutical company because it’s not producing the drugs.

Near Paris, a company called Cellectis SA has set up shop at Biocitech, a French biotechnology park built within a fully-equipped former Sanofi-Aventis research center, and is also developing its products on a broader scale.

A spin-off of the Paris-based Institut Pasteur, Cellectis needed more space, not for its actual products – microscopic enzymes called meganucleases – but for the equipment and personnel that develop these “DNA scissors.”

David Sourdive, Cellectis vice president of corporate development, said the meganucleases occur in nature, where they perform DNA sequence rewriting in genes.

By changing the sequences these proteins are programmed to target, Cellectis can “cut and paste” parts of genomes in very specific ways to repair broken genes or destroy viruses, Dr. Sourdive told GlobalAtlanta.

With 70 employees after about a decade of existence, the publicly listed company first broke even financially this year.

Cellectis has 50 commercial agreements all over the world, and 97 percent of its sales are international.

Dr. Sourdive will travel to Atlanta for the 2009 BIO convention and will also represent Medicen, a Paris virtual bio cluster that he helped establish.

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