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Helsinn is a privately owned pharmaceutical group with headquarters in Lugano, Switzerland, and operating subsidiaries in Ireland and the United States. Helsinn’s business model is focused on the licensing of pharmaceuticals, medical devices and nutritional supplement products in therapeutic niche areas. Helsinn Group in-licenses early-to-late stage new chemical entities, completes their development through the performance of pre-clinical /clinical studies and Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Control (CMC) development, and files and attains their market approvals worldwide. Helsinn’s products are out-licensed to its network of local marketing and commercial partners, selected for their deep in-market knowledge and know-how whom Helsinn assists and supports by providing a full range of product and scientific management services, including commercial, regulatory financial, legal, and medical marketing advice. The active pharmaceutical ingredients and the finished products are manufactured according to the highest quality, safety, and environmental standards at Helsinn’s GMP facilities in Switzerland and Ireland and supplied worldwide to its customers. Further information on Helsinn Group is available at www.helsinn.com.

Hermo Pharma Ltd is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company discovering and developing cutting-edge therapeutic products and approaches for currently untreatable medical needs in the field of neurology. Company’s headquarter is located in Helsinki, Finland. The company outsources the majority of operational R&D tasks to external vendors, while controlling the key technology assets and strategic partnerships.

The company’s R&D programs are based on scientifically innovative concepts. These concepts are being developed by the company through preclinical and clinical Phase II proof-of-principal trials and after that Hermo Pharma will seek partnerships to support Phase III trials and market its products worldwide. Currently Hermo Pharma’s product development focus is on novel disease-modifying treatments for amblyopia in adults and Parkinson’s disease.

Amblyopia in Adults. The project is currently in Phase IIa clinical trials and the results seems very promising. Company is expecting to out-license this product latest in early 2014.

Parkinson´s Disease. Company is currently finalizing the pre-clinical proof-of-concepts studies with the support of M.J.Fox Foundation financing. The therapy is based on the neuroprotective and restorative effects provided by the CDNF protein. The clinical strategy includes of testing of intracrainial delivery platform to treat the patients. The current data looks very promising and the company is expecting to proceed into the IND enabling Toxicology phase during year 2013.  

Immune Design is a privately held biotechnology company based in Seattle, Washington and formed in 2008 to bring together some of the world’s leaders in the field of immunology, and their technologies, to develop therapeutic vaccines for the treatment of infectious and malignant disease. The company’s scientific founders are Dr. David Baltimore (Past President of Caltech, Rockefeller University, and the Whitehead Institute and the Co-Recipient of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine), Dr. Steven Reed (Past Co-founder and CSO of Corixa and Founder/CEO of the Infectious Diseases Research Institute), and Dr. Larry Corey (President and Director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Professor of Medicine and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Washington). To date Immune Design has raised approximately $52 million from The Column Group, Alta Partners, Versant Ventures, and Proquest.  
Immune Design leverages its unique vaccine technologies to precisely control the activation and context of antigen presentation by dendritic cells in order to shape the desired adaptive immune response.  The first technology is a novel adjuvant for recombinant protein antigen (rP)-based vaccines comprising Glucopyranosyl Lipid A (GLA), a synthetic TLR4 agonist, formulated in a stable 2% oil-in-water emulsion (SE). Adjuvants can play an important role in vaccine therapies by stimulating the immune system's response to the target antigen. GLA is the first ‘designer adjuvant’ and was developed by Immune Design co-founder Dr. Steve Reed.  To date GLA-SE has been safely administered in over 300 human subjects.   

Our second vaccine platform is a novel lentivirus-based vector, ID-LV (Immune Design-Lentiviral Vector). The prototype of ID-LV was developed by Immune Design co-founder, Dr. David Baltimore. ID-LV is unique in that it can stimulate the body’s own dendritic cells (DCs), the “sentinels” of the immune system, to produce any, and importantly, multiple antigens of interest in the same product configuration, effectively orchestrating the human immune system to respond to targeted diseases.  Immune Design’s ID-LV and GLA-SE vaccine technologies are immunologically synergistic, as documented in animal models, and thus, have the potential to be used both alone and in combination to create the next generation of vaccines for diseases with unmet medical need.

Immune Targeting Systems is an emerging leader in the development of vaccine products that work by promoting T-cell responses against viruses and cancers (“T-cell vaccines”). The company’s lead product Flunisyn™, currently in clinical development, is a novel T-cell vaccine which aims to elicit immune protection against multiple strains of influenza. The Company’s technology also supports a product portfolio which includes Hepsyn-B, an attractive therapeutic hepatitis B vaccine and T-cell vaccines against cancers.

Immunovaccine is a biotechnology company focused on the application of its novel vaccine delivery platform to the development of vaccines for cancer therapy and infectious diseases. The Company’s DepoVax™ platform is a patented lipid delivery system that presents antigens plus adjuvant to the immune system for a prolonged period and has the potential to enhance immune responses. Immunovaccine has advanced its platform technology and proprietary cancer vaccine into Phase I clinical trials and has demonstrated both safety and immunogenicity potential. Immunovaccine is also capitalizing on the broad potential of its delivery platform by creating new DepoVax-based vaccines through multiple development collaborations. In addition to the Company’s human health vaccine strategy, it continues to capture value from animal health vaccine applications. Immunovaccine has several key partnerships in the animal health sector including an agreement with Pfizer Animal Health, which has licensed the Company’s delivery technology platform to develop vaccines for livestock.

InteRNA Technologies is a Dutch drug discovery and development company engaged in the development of novel breakthrough cancer therapies based on the unique functions of its proprietary miRNAs.

InteRNA well equipped to move quickly towards the clinic

InteRNA's drug development programs aim at developing miRNA-based therapeutics that control genes connected in signal transduction pathways and biological processes that are known to play a role in cancer initiation, progression and metastasis.

InteRNA identified the function of multiple miRNAs in a number of cancer indications through functional screens, using its proprietary lentiviral-based miRNA expression library, which is the largest currently available.

With the Company's proprietary miRNA expression database (generated through deep sequencing) and additional technologies (like RNAseq, PAR-CLIP, bioinformatics, in vivo models) in place to identify the downstream regulated proteins for each miRNA drug candidate, the Company is well equipped to move its novel drug candidates with their biomarkers quickly towards the clinic.