Media Release
July 7, 2022
Perseo pharma announces strategic collaboration with Nestlé Health Science to develop novel therapies for digestive diseases
Muttenz, Switzerland – Perseo pharma, a preclinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on breaking new ground in enzyme therapies, announced today that it has entered a strategic research and development collaboration with Nestlé Health Science S.A. to develop up to three programs targeting enzyme deficiencies in patients suffering from digestive diseases.
“We are incredibly excited to enter into a collaboration with Nestlé Health Science, a leader in the field of nutritional science. This collaboration reinforces our quest to find a novel way to treat digestive diseases” said Dr. Yves Dudal, CEO Perseo pharma. “Pairing our capabilities in developing innovative oral enzyme digestive therapies with Nestle Health Science’s commitment in this area will potentially bring meaningful and life-changing options to patients.”
“Our collaboration with Perseo pharma has the potential to ease the burden of current therapies for patients with digestive enzyme deficiencies,” said Hans-Juergen Woerle, Chief Scientific and Medical Officer for Nestlé Health Science. “We are looking forward to working together to develop innovative solutions.”
We are breaking new ground in the treatment of digestive diseases
At Perseo pharma our goal is to develop oral enzyme therapies to help patients suffering from digestive diseases
Many people around the world suffer from digestive deficiencies. The cause can be a defective pancreas (exocrine pancreatic insufficiency derived from cystic fibrosis, pancreatitis, pancreatic cancer, and other related diseases) or the consequences of a severe medical treatment (chemotherapy, antibiotics).
Current treatments include oral enzyme therapies. Often, those medicines lack efficiency as enzymes are fragile and once ingested, can quickly lose activity in the harsh gastrointestinal environment. Also, they are rapidly flushed down the GI tract together with food and liquids. What patients must endure is a real pill burden, having to take multiple pills (up to 20) per day and at the same time, due to the rapid flushing, they lose the vital nutrition.
This is where Perseo pharma, a preclinical stage biopharmaceutical company, comes in. We are on the quest to breaking new ground in enzyme therapies. Our goal is to develop a series of innovative patient-centered oral enzyme digestive therapies based on our proprietary nanotechnology platform. The platform can be applied to any enzyme or cocktail of enzymes. This innovative technology protects the enzyme in a nano-shield and binds it specifically to the mucus of the small intestine, where the digestion takes place. Digestion efficiency can therefore be highly improved while the pill burden can be eliminated.
Our pipeline
| Therapeutic indication | Therapeutic enzyme(s) | Development stage |
| Wave 1 – Digestive therapies |
|---|
| PER301 | Exocrine Pancreatic Insufficiency (EPI) | Pancreatic Enzyme Replacement Therapy (PERT) with cocktail of lipase, protease, amylase | Preclinical (FiH S2-2023)  |
| PER302 | Acquired Lactase Deficiency (ALD) | Lactase | Preclinical (FiH S2-2023) |
| PER303 | Phenylketonuria (PKU) | Phenylalanine Ammonia Lyase | Preclinical (FiH S1-2024)  |
| PER312 | Congenital Sucrase-Isomaltase Deficiency (CSID) | Sucrase-Isomaltase | Preclinical (FiH S2-2024)  |
| Wave 2 – Other therapeutic areas |
|---|
| PER100 | Oncology | Cocktail of enzymes active on tumor metabolism | Preclinical |
| PER200 | Lysosomal Storage Diseases | Systemic enzyme replacement therapies | Research |
*FiH: First in Human