LabCom Archipex, working to develop new drug formulations

Continuing a fifteen-year collaboration, the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) and IPSEN, a private company, announced the creation of a joint laboratory at the end of 2014. Baptised Archi-pex (from "Peptidic architectures and formulations"), this structure will be supported for three years by ANR through the LabCom instrument.

Adopting the most integrated form of partnership-based research, this joint public/private laboratory will bring together IPSEN's' R&D group located in Dreux in the North of France, the Physics Institute of Rennes (CNRS/Rennes University) and the Membrane Systems, Photobiology, Stress and Detoxification public laboratory (CNRS/CEA/Paris Sud University) in Saclay.

Its research will focus on the development of new pharmaceutical forms that allow prolonged release of the medication. These alternative medication administration routes, based on the self-assemblies of peptides, could be used in the field of endocrinology and hormone studies, for example.

The LabCom instrument

Set up by ANR at the beginning of 2013, the aim of the LabCom instrument is to develop the collaboration and transfer potential of academic research players by creating a partnership between a laboratory and a company based on a common roadmap. Designed for ease of implementation by project principal investigators, this funding instrument enables the entities concerned to submit their application on a continuous-flow basis. There is no obligation to have a "bricks-and-mortar" structure; a virtual laboratory can, for example, make an application. The selected LabComs are then allocated flat-rate funding of 300,000 euros over a three-year period.

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