(News Bulletin 247) – The last chance operation was not a great success. The specialist in lysosomal diseases is heading straight for compulsory liquidation, no buyer having made a takeover offer before the deadline of April 12.

The endgame is near for Lysogene. The biopharmaceutical company is heading straight for compulsory liquidation, no buyer having applied to take over the company in difficulty. The potential buyers had until April 12 to submit their takeover bid for the company specializing in gene therapies targeting diseases of the central nervous system.

Barring a dramatic change, the next step seems inevitable, namely the opening of judicial liquidation proceedings in the weeks to come. “The Nanterre Commercial Court should decide on the follow-up to be given to the recovery procedure and on the possible opening of judicial liquidation proceedings in the coming weeks”, indicates Lysogene in a press release released Friday evening after the closing. .

In great financial distress, Lysogene was looking for a buyer as part of the receivership proceedings opened by a decision of the Nanterre Commercial Court dated January 24, 2023.

As part of this procedure, potential buyers were invited to come forward. But the Lysogene case did not turn out to be as attractive as the company had hoped. On two occasions, the deadline for filing takeover offers was postponed for lack of a candidate interested in the file. Once on February 16 and another on March 25. Despite this double postponement granted by the receiver, no buyer or investor wanted to give Lysogene a last chance. The respite was short-lived…

A nightmarish end to the year 2022

The descent into hell of Lysogene began a few weeks before Christmas, and followed a partial failure of a clinical study in Sanfilippo syndrome. At the beginning of December, Lysogene had requested the opening of a safeguard procedure “given its financial situation and the absence of obtaining new financing to date”.

For a company in difficulty, the safeguard procedure is likely to increase the company’s chances of reaching a debt restructuring plan with its creditors.

In the specific case of Lysogene, the opening of the safeguard procedure should give it the time it needs to discuss with investors and potential partners interested in its research programs. The objective was to find a solution “to consolidate its financial situation and extend its financing horizon beyond its current maturity”, i.e. in February 2023.

However, barely a month later, the situation is deteriorating on the financial side. Lysogene requested the conversion of the safeguard proceedings into receivership. “This conversion request is based on the fact that the safeguard procedure has not made it possible to identify a solution to consolidate Lysogene’s financial situation and sustain its financing horizon”, explained the company in its press release.

The conversion of the safeguard procedure into receivership will have left Lysogene a few additional months to complete its search for a buyer or investor. A quest that unfortunately remained in vain with the announcement of the day…

With the legal liquidation of Lysogene which seems to be looming, it is also the history of the company on the Parisian market which will come to an end. The quotation of the title is not about to resume. The company had asked Euronext to suspend the listing of its share on January 6 at a price of 0.275 euro, in anticipation of the announcement of its request for conversion of the safeguard procedure into receivership.

Lysogene took its first steps on the Paris Stock Exchange in February 2017 at an IPO price of 6.80 euros to finance its most advanced drug candidate. This is LYS-SAF302, targeting Sanfilippo A disease, which suffered from one of the daughters – since deceased – of Karen Aiach, the founder of Lysogene.

Without any medical training at the start, she teamed up with geneticist Olivier Danos (research director at the CNRS and head of the gene transfer team at Necker-Enfants Malades) to try to develop a cutting-edge treatment to find a therapeutic solution to this rare pathology.