Why Biopredic and Eurosafe join SaferWorldbyDesign

Dr. Christophe Chesné is the founder and CEO of Biopredic International and Eurosafe. Biopredic distributes over 400 products used in drug development and discovery, cosmetics and chemicals and is the exclusive worldwide licensor of the human hepatic stem cell line HepaRG. Eurosafe is a CRO providing in vitro assays, computational toxicology and PBPK methods, consumer testing and regulatory toxicology assessments. Dr. Chesné explains why his two companies are founding partners of SaferWorldbyDesign.

You are Founder/CEO of Biopredic and Eurosafe, two of the seven companies in SaferWorldbyDesign. Why such strong support for the initiative?

My motivation is at least two-fold. First, I believe that in vitro technology alone has more or less reached its plateau of performance in predictive toxicology. This point of view may not be shared by new players, but in my opinion – and that’s the opinion of someone who’s been in the business for over 20 years - in vitro alone has reached a certain plateau because it is difficult to extrapolate to in vivo situations. So, I believe we need simulation tools, in silico approaches, algorithms - all these new techniques, new to me, at least – to leverage in vitro data. And, eventually, in silico will come first and in vitro will come second to confirm the hypotheses of the in silico simulations.

And your second reason?

My second reason for being part of SaferWorldbyDesign is the initiative’s business-oriented portal. By bringing together partners - seven to start, but in a relatively short time we could get to 20 – which combine different expertise, this portal will generate revenues and greater visibility. In the in vitro business, you have many, many specialised players - small companies focused on one pathway, one target organ, one specific readout, certain specialised techniques - and, after a few years, all these players reach the peak of their business. With this portal, I think they may be able to reach another level. SaferWorldbyDesign can be a win-win-win situation: a win for customers and industrial users; a win for participants; a win for players referred by the portal.

'SaferWorldbyDesign can be a win-win-win situation: a win for customers and industrial users; a win for participants; a win for players referred by the portal.’

What do you want for your company from the initiative?

What I expect from SaferWorldbyDesign is a layer of digital services added on top of our products so that customers can better interpret and extrapolate data.

Which of your many products and services will you list on SaferWorldbyDesign?

I am prepared to put all of Eurosafe’s manpower and entire portfolio behind SaferWorldbyDesign, as well as Starlight, a company I recently founded with chemists. I think success will depend on focusing on good starting cases and, in time, enriching the solutions. We have already identified 15 business cases, but that’s too much to start with.

Which business case will you start with?

Eurosafe is one of the few licensees in the world of a unique skin sensitisation assay called SENS-IS, the only assay that not only classifies the danger of a substance but also gives the potency of that danger. We already include SENS-IS with SaferSkin, one of the SaferWorldbyDesign products. We also plan to add the HepaRG cells, which have become very popular worldwide in industry.

How do the partner companies complement each other?

‘I believe in vitro technology alone has more or less reached its plateau of performance in predictive toxicology.’

I have already some ideas of what we could build together. For example, there are more than 600 papers about HepaRG and a constant flow of new papers, two per week, from all over the world from major players in the life science industry! ToxPlanet is a documentation service and could dig further into HepaRG publications and dedicate a special service to make research easier. Another partner, SBX, is very good in systems biology and there are many HepaRG papers about systems biology with different applications, different IT systems, so SBX could eventually cover all that with one system and connect it to different mathematical models that have been built. I see many, many possibilities for partnership.

What are the next steps for SaferWorldbyDesign?

Consider everything, make choices, put ourselves in the shoes of our customers, present concrete solutions and generate turnover to maintain the motivation of these small companies who, after all, have many other things to do. The next three months will decide the future as we see how we can shape all these inputs that we are gathering.