Nestlé puts down $40M, kicks off deal with gut microbiome specialist to fight food allergies
18 Jul 2022
French company Enterome, which works with the microbiome, has scored $40 million in a wide-ranging deal with its long-time Swiss investor Nestlé Health Science to co-develop an oral pill for food allergies that’s on the cusp of entering the clinic.
“Today, we believe that we have reached a level where we understand what the bacteria living in the human gut are able to produce,” said Pierre Belichard, CEO of Enterome.
Studying human gut bacteria, Enterome has discovered a protein which mimics a naturally produced human hormone called Interluekin- 10 (IL-10), known to fight food allergies and conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease.
“IL-10 has been seen for a long time as a magic bullet able to decrease inflammation in a lot of different organs in the body,” Belichard added. Reduced inflammation reduces the impact from food allergies, he said.
The two companies will work on a compound dubbed EB1010, which contains the newly discovered protein.
Nestlé is also betting that there’s more where that came from. Leveraging what Enterome calls EndoMimics, the two partners will keep looking for compounds that act like human hormones or cytokines. Down the road, they also hope to create a new class called AllerMimics: antigens produced by microbiome that mimic allergens such as peanut.
To kick off this alliance, Enterome will receive a cash upfront as well as equity from Nestlé. The biotech will be responsible for leading drug discovery activities and bear related costs up to the investigational new drug application. In the future, Nestlé, which hold around 17% stakes in Enterome, could shell out additional clinical and sales payments for each licensed therapeutic candidate plus royalties on net sales.
Discovering a human hormone-mimicking protein was by no means an easy task, Belichard noted. Researchers at Enterome scanned the gut microbiome of 26,000 people across the world using their fecal matter. They found 23 million unique proteins and peptides manufactured by the gut bacteria, using bioinformatics tools.
“What you find in the fecal matter is what goes on inside the gut from the beginning to the end. It is giving you the contents of the bacteria from the whole GI tract,” Belichard said.
In the case of EB1010, after studying the proteins for around three months, researchers at Enterome finally homed in on one candidate, a 30 amino acid protein, which closely mimicked IL-10.
“This is a small protein and is highly active. It has ability to interact with the human body by activating a human receptor that we have identified in the gut,” said Belichard.
The compound, which will be in a form of a pill, will enter clinical trials in 2023. Belichard hopes that the pill will become available to patients by 2028.
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