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Origin of the Institute
Innovation Against Cancer

Or the story of a scientific revolution!

Dominique Joubert is a scientist who has made her research career mainly within Inserm (National Institute of Health and Medical Research) in France, but she has also worked in Sweden and the USA.

 

After 30 years of conducting research on cancer, Dominique Joubert put forward a theory on the reversibility of cancer in a solid cancer… It was still necessary to demonstrate its biological reality.

 

The observation that a protein had to leave the tumor cell to reinteract with it to have its effects in colorectal cancer, allowed her to demonstrate the veracity of her theory of “tumor reversion” (so-called differentiation strategy).

 

This differentiation strategy had already been demonstrated on a so-called liquid cancer (such as leukemia). There, we were talking about a so-called solid cancer (such as colon, liver, stomach…).

 

At that time, proposing this type of theory for a solid cancer was scientific heresy… and was long considered as such.

 

How to understand this reality?

 

For there to be cancer, and stability of the cancerous state, a signaling pathway must be constitutively activated (permanent activation). A door opens!

 

This is due to a genetic mutation. And who said genetic mutation said irreversibility of the state of the mutated cell. And so, in theory, this door could no longer close. In addition, this protein (which was produced and had to react on the cell) was itself the result of the activation of a very important signaling pathway in cancer, the Wnt pathway. This pathway was constitutively activated because a mutation on an element essential to its control prevented this regulation and therefore prevented the closing of the door. We therefore had a mutation on one of the control elements which led to the activation of a pathway which itself produced multiple proteins including this protein which we will call hPG80.

 

Imagining that neutralizing this single protein would regulate the pathway, in place of its mutated control element, was unimaginable for the scientific world of the time. Because closing the door allowed the tumor cell to become "normal" again, to regain a function and to die a "natural" death.

 

Yet this is what D. Joubert will demonstrate as soon as the first experiment is carried out in 2003!

 

It was still necessary for this to leave the basic research laboratory to become solutions for fighting cancer.

 

It was D. Joubert who, in 2006, decided to create a biotechnology company with the mission: To develop a therapy against colorectal cancer and ensure that this solution reaches the patient and benefits them! Just that.

 

Nothing in his entourage allowed him to imagine success. No financial means, no expertise in the field of drug development, no government or industrial relations.

 

Yet she "took on board" her laboratory colleague, her nephew and her husband!

 

In October 2006, an agreement was signed to create this development company (BioRéalités)... but not a euro in her pocket! She borrowed enough to constitute her share of the capital.

 

In February 2007, the company existed and, thanks to her nephew and his friends, raised the first 250,000 euros needed to get started.

 

In 2011, the company raised €8.8 million through presentation evenings "among friends" and repayable loans.

 

At the beginning of 2010, if the neutralization molecule was developed and the mechanisms for understanding what hPG80 was were on the table, it was clear that the rest could no longer be financed in this way.

 

The decision was made to sell the assets (molecule and industrial property) to an industrialist and to finish developing the therapy for and with him.

 

Negotiations will be opened with 13 of the largest industrialists on the planet. The smallest of them will show the most desire to develop. An agreement is signed in June 2011 with the Servier group. But the so-called "Mediator" affair falls at that time. While D. Joubert and his team were doing good work with this industrialist, the Servier group is going through a complicated phase in its history (eviction of the man who had done everything to integrate this development, Jean-Philippe Seta, then departure of several senior executives and finally the death of the founder, Jacques Servier), weighs down the development.

 

All the scientific indicators are positive, the drug candidate is ready to enter the clinic... but, in the summer of 2014, at the meeting that should announce the decision to enter the clinic, the Servier Group announces its strategic withdrawal!

 

In the meantime, it has been shown that all cancers produce hPG80 and that neutralizing hPG80 has an effect on tumor stem cells, i.e. the “tumor reactor.” Indeed, hPG80 is essential for the survival of these cells.

 

 

D. Joubert and her husband decided to restart the developments. To do this, they sold what was supposed to improve their retirement.

 

A long and difficult negotiation was initiated to recover the assets, then a world tour was undertaken to find a new industrial partner.

 

But since one industrialist had withdrawn from this development, the other industrialists then thought that there was a scientific problem and asked that the project pass phase II clinical trials to be reviewed and acquired… but no proposal for financing these clinical trials (which cost between €120 and €200 million).

 

D. Joubert and her husband then restarted this scientific and medical adventure by taking advantage of the fact that all tumors produce hPG80. They developed a cancer diagnostic tool to detect and quantify hPG80 in the blood of patients.

The objective was twofold,

  • to demonstrate that hPG80 is indeed the mechanism at the heart of cancer,

  • to revive industrial interest in these solutions.

 

Here again, it is private investors, without the help of investment funds, banks or the State, who will support the team.

 

At the end of 2019, €64 million had been raised since the start of the project and if the therapy molecule has still been in the freezers since 2014 (due to lack of money), the DxPG80 test to aid in screening* and monitoring the effectiveness of therapies* has been developed, registered with the CE mark and tested in clinical trials and in a real-life experiment.

 

The world of diagnostics (mainly the USA) is working on the development of such a test with strong communications and fundraising worth billions of US$… but it is discreetly that the new team around D. Joubert has developed this test.

 

* A test is a tool providing information, it is the doctor who makes the diagnosis and therefore detects or not cancer.

 

Why this discretion?

 

You have to know what you want!

If you want to get people talking about you and make a lot of money, you have to go to the press, make a lot of noise, say a lot of things that are not always entirely accurate.

 

The consequence may be that the medical world, which must implement these tools, finds itself between the hammer of very and too poorly informed public opinion and the anvil of the realities of a health system and the technical limits of the use of innovative solutions.

 

We are here to ensure that these solutions integrate the health system and are implemented by the medical profession.

 

We must therefore build the tools allowing this integration with the medical profession and not against them.

 

This is where the need arises to move to a new development tool, after academic research and the biotechnology company, we must move to an Institute!

 

An innovation, however extraordinary it may be, is above all a problem for the health system!

 

A healthcare system is always and increasingly tense (work pace and time), and therefore not very able to devote time and energy to integrating a technological breakthrough that will change mastered practices.

 

The more innovation breaks with practices, the more difficult it is to integrate it into a "classic" healthcare system.

 

Given the immense upheaval that the integration of hPG80 solutions will represent in the world of healthcare, it is necessary to create a place to develop protocols for using these solutions in a healthcare environment by integrating all the other available tools.

 

That is the work of an Institute!

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