On June 20, 2021 MaaT Pharma, a French clinical-stage biotech company specialized in the development of microbiome-based therapies aiming to restore the microbiome/immune system symbiosis in oncology patients, reported that its MEPA (Microbiome Engineering Platform) program was awarded a EURO 1.9 million grant from the Plan France Relance (Press release, MaaT Pharma, JUL 20, 2021, View Source [SID1234584975]). Initiated during the Summer of 2020, Plan France Relance was established to make strategic investments in critical sectors of French industry, including Health.

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"We are very honored and proud to be laureates of the France Relance initiative. The French Government’s commitment to invest in strategic industries is an opportunity for MaaT Pharma, as a key player in the microbiome industry, to further pursue our development plans and to actively contribute to the biomanufacturing of innovative drugs in France. This is a team success, and this financing supports the efforts of women and men at MaaT Pharma who work tirelessly to deliver groundbreaking innovations in microbiome therapeutics," said Hervé Affagard, Founder and CEO at MaaT Pharma. "The France Relance program will support the development of our unique and innovative industrial processes that leverage all the functional diversity of the microbiome to deliver better outcomes in cancer treatment."

MEPA, supporting a new generation of microbiome therapies

MaaT Pharma has developed two approaches for its oncology-focused therapies. The first relies on healthy donor donations ("native" products) and aims to restore the gut microbiota of patients with liquid tumors (notably leukemia). The second is focused on the development of "synthetic" microbiome therapies, which are co-fermented and are designed to colonize the patient’s gut with a functional microbiome to improve response to treatment in patients with solid tumors.

MaaT Pharma’s unique pharmaceutical drug development platform relies on advanced artificial intelligence data analysis tools and on a proprietary technology for the co-fermentation of microbial ecosystems to support the design, development, and large-scale manufacturing of novel Microbiome Ecosystem Therapies (MET).

The grant funding will support a key step in developing this platform, namely the industrialization and standardization of co-fermentation processes according to cGMP manufacturing standards, as well as the manufacturing of clinical batches. Ultimately, MaaT Pharma’s manufacturing platform may be used to deliver a large range of microbiome ecosystem therapies in various indications.

Accelerating the development of products in immuno-oncology

The MEPA program is a new step in Maat Pharma’s development as it supports the expansion of its indications to include solid tumors and the acceleration of its immuno-oncology program.

Recent studies have shown that the gut microbiome composition may improve the therapeutic effect of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI). In particular, a patient’s gut microbiome richness1 and diversity2 are predictors of their response to ICI3. Two pilot clinical studies also suggest that gut microbiota transfer from ICI-responding donors to non-responders can restore the response in the latter4.

With its therapies, MaaT Pharma aims to synthetically replicate a responder microbiota, combining high richness and diversity with selected functional networks in each indication of interest to improve the response to immune checkpoint inhibitors.

1 Total number of bacteria present in the gut
2 Total number of different strains present in the gut
3 Gopalakrishnan, V. et al, Science, 2018; Routy et al, Science 2018
4 Davar D. et al, Science 2021 ; Baruch E.N. et al, Science, 2021