French biotech company Hybrigenics continues to rely on its proteomics services business for support in light of lackluster revenues from its drug-discovery program.
Presenting this week at the BIO-CEO Investor Conference in New York City, the company showcased a 2011-2012 corporate development plan that called for cash generation by its Hybrigenics Services proteomics business to fund its drug development plans.
This model is in line with the company's year-end earnings, which it released the week before. For 2010 Hybrigenics posted €3.54 million ($4.84 million) in service revenues, up 6 percent from €3.33 million the year before. Pharma revenues, which came exclusively from a research contract with French drugmaker Servier, dropped 55 percent to €400,000 from €900,000 in 2009.
In July, the company created a fully owned subsidiary, Hybrigenics Services, to house its proteomics services business. At that time, CEO Remi Delansorne told ProteoMonitor that formation of the subsidiary would potentially provide the proteomics business with greater access to funding, with which it planned to expand its marketing and sales operations with a particular focus on the US market (PM 07/09/2010).
Hybrigenics' revenues from North America grew 36 percent in 2010, to €1.21 million from €890,000 in 2009. The North American market now represents 34 percent of the company's service revenues, up from 27 percent in 2009 and 21 percent in 2008.
Hybrigenics' fee-for-service protein interaction offering uses yeast two-hybrid systems to discover novel protein interactions in cells, validate protein interactions, and study the inhibition of interactions between proteins. Clients for the company's proteomics services include firms like Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, and L'Oreal as well as academic customers like Harvard and Johns Hopkins University.