corporate history
Originally conceived as a specialty pharma company focused on addiction, Addex raised €10 million from top European venture capital investors in 2002. But soon thereafter, when the company developed a process for discovering drug-like allosteric modulators, Addex recognized that the platform 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.
In order to leverage and build upon its first mover advantage, the company has rapidly assembled a team of drug developers with significant pharmaceutical industry experience, including chemists, molecular biologists, biochemists, veterinarians, physicians and others. This Addex team, advised by some of the world's leading researchers, has focused not only on building knowledge of allosteric modulation but also generated a growing ibrary of over 60,000 allosteric modulators and industrialized biological assays that allow detection, optimization and confirmation the mechanism of action of allosteric compounds on a large scale.
Building on these internally discovered tools Addex has grown into a fully integrated pharmaceutical discovery and development company with significant clinical development capbilities and a diverse pipeline of proprietary compounds that address a broad range of major diseases. Addex also has a growing portfolio of patents and patent applications covering the composition of matter and methods of use for its allosteric modulators.
The lead product, ADX10059, an internally discovered negative allosteric modulator (NAM) of metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5) met primary endpoints in separate Phase IIa trials for gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and migraine, respectively, in April 2007 – only five years after the company’s inception.
In May 2007, Addex completed an initial public offering on the SWX 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 Ventures and SR One (the venture investing unit of GlaxoSmithKline).
