Earlier this year, Merck Serono announced it would close facilities in Geneva. As part of this closure, they also announced they would create a startup fund. One of the startups generated from this is Prexton Therapeutics (which is so new it doesn't even have a webpage yet). A search of the company registry reveals they were incorporated at the end of July of this year and interviews state they will be populated with scientists who used to work at Merck Serono.
As I mentioned and unlike other companies I have profiled so far on this blog, this one is at the very beginnings. Although, they are also rather ahead in the game. According to the In Vivo blog:
Prexton will work with preclinical compounds discovered at Merck Serono, says founder and CEO Francois Conquet, who estimated the company will start out about 18 months away from entering clinical development.A search of the founders of the company reveal several close associations with Merck Serono Ventures (Roel Bulthuis is the head). I couldn't find information about the fate of Merck Serono Ventures with the closure of the Geneva facilities.
The targets of Prexton Therapeutics are the metabotropic glutamate receptors mGluR3 and mGluR4, targets for Parkinson's disease. As pointed out in the In Vivo blog post, Prexton Therapeutics has similar targets as Addex Therapeutics, which have a Parkinson's drug currently finished with Phase IIa trials. Addexx Therapeutics was formed with Francois Conquet as the chief executive officer and he is also a founder of Prexton Therapeutics. Both companies are (will be) located in the start-up incubator Eclosion.
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