Saxol is a company born at the end of last November. It is the result of research carried out by Laurence Lafanechère, CNRS research director at the Institute for the Advancement of Biosciences (IAB) and future former deputy director of the IAB. “You probably know people who have been treated with chemotherapy,” begins Laurence Lafanechère. It’s quite violent with lots of side effects like hair loss or extreme fatigue. But 80% of them also suffer from peripheral neuropathies, that is to say they have pain in the tips of their fingers, feet, or sensations of cold. When you stop chemo, all the effects disappear, but these effects, which pass through the nervous system, remain in almost a quarter of patients. They do not have the right to forget about chemo. The one who plays the piano can no longer play it, the one who likes to walk no longer goes for walks. In my team, we found a molecule which could be a future drug and which has two effects. One of its major effects is to prevent neurons from degenerating when they are attacked by chemotherapies and this therefore protects them from peripheral neuropathies. »
The other effect of this molecule is to allow the dosage of a specific substance to be lowered. “Taxol is extracted from yew bark, it’s good but it’s very toxic and it targets something that I study: microtubules. I was looking for molecules which alone do nothing and which are capable of synergizing with taxol to lower the doses and that’s how I found the Carba 1 molecule.”
“It’s not a painkiller.”
Initial in vitro tests prompted the IAB team to continue with animal models. Tests were carried out in particular on rats in Clermont-Ferrand. “We inject taxol which will cause the degeneration of the neurons. The model is to put a point at the end of the rat’s paw and the rat will remove it with pressure. [mécaniques] very weak because it hurts him. And we saw that when we put our molecule at the same time as taxol, we did not have neuropathy. But it is not a painkiller, assures the researcher. We analyzed the nerve endings in the legs and found that they had indeed diminished with chemo. However, with our molecule, we prevent this disappearance of nerve endings. »
The mechanism? “We are affecting an enzyme involved in metabolism. Let’s say we boost the energy metabolism of the neuron. » Carba 1 does not exist in our body. “It was synthesized by chemists,” explains Ms. Lafanechère. To continue this research, a company was created, Saxol, with the help of Satt Linksium. Multi-entrepreneur in the sector, Philippe Bordeau took over as president. Laurence Lafanechère will support the company while remaining at the CNRS.
We now need to find funds, hence the participation in iVenture. “We have to do what we call a maximum toxicity study and also work on the formulation of this molecule,” explains the woman who was not particularly inclined to resume an entrepreneurial adventure after the shutdown of Cellipse, another company resulting from her research already in the fight against cancer. Her commitment earned her the title of personality of the year by the readers of Le Dauphiné Libération in 2012.
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