Sarah Colombani, BIM winner, launches OcciCal Therapeutics
Currently in development, OcciCal Therapeutics aims to finalize a treatment capable of curing a respiratory disorder that is common in hospitals. The project leader, a research engineer at the PhyMedExp laboratory, PhyMedExp, Sarah Colombani has the support of Booster Innovation Montpellier (BIM), which aims to identify and support innovative projects.
The young woman never imagined she would enter the business world so quickly. Barely eight months after completing her thesis, and propelled by the express support of BIM (Booster Innovation Montpellier), of which she has been a laureate since early December, Sarah Colombani is in the process of creating her very first start-up. Named OcciCal Therapeutics, this spin-off actually brings together five co-founders from Inserm, CNRS, and the University of Montpellier, where most of the preliminary experiments related to the project were carried out.
Specifically, she and her team aim to overcome a common respiratory disease that affects 70% of patients when they enter intensive care. "It's a disease that is little known to the public, which develops in the hospital. At present, it is difficult to avoid, and it prolongs the length of hospital stays by an average of five days. It therefore contributed to the congestion of intensive care units and the saturation of hospital beds during the COVID crisis, when everyone became aware of the significance of this dysfunction, "she explains.
Planetary alignment
For her thesis, defended in July 2023, the researcher focused on a heart condition associated with autism, which affects many children, and which earned her recognition from the Foundation for Medical Research. This is a promising topic that is directly related to the respiratory condition that OcciCal Therapeutics is interested in, since the protein and mechanism involved are the same. "But at the end of my thesis, I was left feeling a little unsatisfied. I didn't see any concrete impact on patients,"Sarah confides.
Then, during informal discussions with the future co-founders and other researchers who had been working on the subject for more than 10 years, the idea suddenly "germinated." "Everything hinged on a perfect alignment of circumstances. Part of the team had already demonstrated the feasibility of our concept on animal models similar to humans. This allowed us to prove the effectiveness of this miracle molecule, synthesized by the chemists we work with. So after they filed a patent in November 2022, we decided it was time to take the plunge. We all had this lightbulb moment together in early 2023,"says Sarah.
The treatment she hopes to finalize with her colleagues at OcciCal Therapeutics was conceived through a combination of brainstorming and multiple areas of expertise. Now backed by BIM funding of €48,550, the young woman is preparing to move on to the next stage. The first step will be to find the right solvent to administer this molecule to humans without altering its effectiveness. She and her associates will then define the treatment regimen to be adopted, in other words, how many injections and at what intervals... "These are essential experiments before we can move on to the regulatory preclinical phase, " adds the researcher.
“It was the first time I pitched the project.”
In this promising success story, BIM acted as an accelerator. It also enabled Sarah to acquire skills in the field of business without having to go to business school."I had to learn everything from scratch. But I was really motivated. I told myself that BIM was a good first step." As part of the Booster program last October, the research engineer took a three-day training course to learn the basics of pitching. After that, she finally took the plunge with her partners."It was the first time I had pitched the project with them. We answered questions in unison, facing multidisciplinary profiles, but who were not researchers. It was good practice. Even if I had only received two euros, I think I would have seen it as a victory, given the skills I acquired in such a short time,"she smiles.
As a result, the team received a substantial grant to launch the project and currently benefits from the support of a sponsor from the business ecosystem to accompany OcciCal Therapeutics' first steps for a year. In this case, the regional economic development agency AD'OCC... "When you come from a research laboratory, this is invaluable. I've learned a lot,"says Sarah, who hopes to bring her treatment to patients by 2035...