How Biocydex has come to enhance organ conservationA smallish company belonging to the Poitiers Biopole is about to launch onto the market a patented solution aimed at enhancing organ conversation in cases of transplantation. Here is a brief overview of this innovatory Poitiers-based spinoff.
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Each year in France, specialized centers perform approximately 3000 kidney grafts. The kidney is far more often transplanted than any other organ, including the liver and the heart. It is precisely as regards this niche market that Biocydex, which is hosted by the biomedical science pole of Poitiers University and has eight people on its payroll, intends to impose a new solution aimed at enhancing organ conservation. Vectisol®. That is the word with which this smallish Poitiers Biopole company has patented « its » molecular complex in Europe and the United States and will submit an application to the French agency for health product sanitary safety (Afssaps). “We should be receiving an answer over the first half of 2010”, hopes El Mustapha Belgsir, the executive director of Biocydex.
Subsequent to tests performed through October 2009, the director is convinced that the additive manufactured in Poitiers will allow «more rapid recovery of the physiological activity of the transplanted organ». «Our solution is likely to spare patients the step consisting in postoperative dialysis». As for the second major breakthrough, the trials performed up until now tend to show that the physiological activity of the transplanted kidney resembles that of a healthy kidney «within three to four days». «This finding indicates that our molecular complex protects cells from the deleterious effects of (organ) conservation».
Conclusive trials
This molecular principle would never have seen the light of day without the close cooperation involving both Biocydex and the Inserm laboratory «of Ischemia reperfusion in renal transplantation» (U927). In this laboratory, Thierry Hauet holds the position of scientific manager of the Ibisa platform, which is located at the “Domaine du Magneraud” (Charente-Maritime), and works in partnership with the Poitou-Charentes Inra (French national agronomy research institute).
«Since 2007, we have observed that some of our molecules interestingly interact with cell membranes», states El Mustapha Belgsir. As for the Magneraud platform, where actual renal transplantations are performed on pigs, it has paved the way for validation of the hypotheses put forward by the Biocydex researchers. The next step consists in persuading the Afssaps agency that Vectisol® is indeed efficacious. From this standpoint, the most recent international congress held in Nice by the French Transplantation Society offers reassurance to the Poitiers-based spinoff.
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