25M-euro grant for Transgene from French agency

Strasbourg, France-based Transgene says that it has been granted 25.0 million euros ($32.0 million) by the French agency for industrial innovation (Agence Francaise de l'Innovation Industrielle) for funding the company's participation in the Advanced Diagnostics and New therapeutic Approaches project. The funding, which is subject to a European Commission approval expected in the second quarter of 2007, is to be paid over the life of the project and will consist of grants for Transgene totalling 17.8 million euros and loans of 7.2 million euros refundable only in case of success.

The ADNA project aims at meeting the challenges of personalized medicine in the fields of cancer, infectious diseases and rare genetic disorders through the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. The ADNA project will be carried out by four partners: bioMerieux, Genethon, GenoSafe and Transgene, under the coordination of Merieux Alliance.

The core of the program will be to develop pharmacogenomic approaches, ie, identifying, developing and validating molecular markers (biomarkers) that would allow the prescription of new treatments to those patients most likely to benefit from them. Indeed, biomarkers aim at earlier diagnosis, better knowledge and follow-up of disease evolution and the patient's response to the treatment.