AIS Biotech

AIS Biotech aims to bring about a paradigm shift in the fight against infectious diseases by offering a new alternative for the prevention and treatment of infections.

By developing a new class of innovative biomedicines—anti-infective sugar-based decoys—AIS Biotech hopes to contribute to the ongoing fight against infectious diseases and antibiotic resistance.

Some viruses, such as influenza viruses responsible for seasonal and pandemic flu, MERS-CoV, which is highly pathogenic and endemic in the Middle East, or bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa (nosocomial diseases), bind to complex sugars on the surface of cells as the first step in infection.

Thanks to its innovative approach and its technological platform for the bioproduction of complex sugars, AIS Biotech is developing biomedicines capable of deceiving these pathogens by mimicking their natural targets in order to block infection.

Our innovation is based on a unique process for synthesizing complex sugars, developed by CERMAV, a CNRS laboratory in Grenoble. This production process, the result of 25 years of academic research, is the barrier to entry. It can be industrialized and has a low environmental impact, offering a sustainable alternative to synthetic chemistry.

AIS Biotech, founded in March 2023, is exploiting this technology to develop its first drug candidate for the treatment of influenza and aims to develop, beyond this first molecule, a genuine pipeline of sugar-based anti-infective drug candidates.

Our first “first-in-class” drug candidate, GlycoFlu, targets a major public health problem with significant economic implications: the influenza viruses responsible for human influenza. Solid proof of concept (validated in vitro and in vivo) has already been obtained, and the results demonstrate GlycoFlu’s ability to block viral attachment, significantly reduce infection, and protect the host in reference preclinical models.

These results validate the biological relevance and therapeutic potential of this anti-infective decoy strategy and confirm the technology’s ability to be extended to other priority pathogens.

The ambition now is to accelerate the development of the platform in order to effectively address emerging or re-emerging viruses, as well as the global challenge of antibiotic resistance, by offering targeted, non-toxic therapeutic solutions that bypass the development of resistance.

The pre-acceleration phase with IDCluster will enable AIS Biotech to strengthen its development strategy, structure its technology platform to accelerate the emergence of innovative therapies, and consolidate key scientific and industrial partnerships.