about us
Originally conceived as a specialty pharma company focused on addiction, Addex was founded by pharmaceutical industry researchers with €10 million from top European venture capital investors in 2002. While trying to discover a new drug to treat addiction, the Addex researchers developed a scalable process for discovering drug-like allosteric modulators. They quickly recognized that this innovation could become a discovery platform that was much more broadly applicable than the company's original business plan had envisioned. Therefore, in 2003, the management adapted and re-focused Addex on industrializing the allosteric modulator discovery and development process.
Although a handful of allosteric modulators have been discovered and are now marketed drugs, they were identified by serendipity. Addex is the first company to focus on industrializing the process of finding and developing allosteric modulators. In order to leverage and build upon its first mover advantage, the company has assembled a team of drug developers with significant pharmaceutical industry experience, including chemists, molecular biologists, biochemists, veterinarians, physicians and others. Advised by some of the world's leading researchers, the team has focused not only on building knowledge of allosteric modulation but also generated a tailored allostery-biased library of over 70,000 compounds as well as proprietary high-throughput biological assays that allow detection, optimization and confirmation of the mechanism of action for allosteric compounds.
Building on these internally discovered tools, Addex has grown into a fully integrated pharmaceutical discovery and development company with significant clinical development capabilities and a diverse pipeline of proprietary compounds that address a broad range of major diseases. Because the allosteric approach is well differentiated, many of the therapeutic targets Addex is pursuing are clinically validated, thereby reducing the risk profile of its products. Addex has a growing portfolio of patents and patent applications covering the composition of matter and methods of use for its allosteric modulators.
In May 2007, Addex completed an initial public offering on the SIX Swiss Exchange, raising CHF137 million ($111 million / €83 million). It was the largest biotech IPO in Europe in three years and among top ten biotech IPOs worldwide in five years. Prior to the IPO, Addex had raised CHF 106 million in three venture capital financing rounds. Venture investors included Sofinnova Partners, Index Ventures, TVM Capital, Roche Venture Fund and SR-One, the corporate venture arm of GlaxoSmithKline.