About us?
Our mission
ApoRepair is a biotech company emerging from the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) that aims to improve the management of patients in the acute phase of myocardial infarction (MI).
To achieve this, the team has developed a first-in-class therapeutic peptide that can be injected to MI patients at the onset of artery reopening.
Our team
She obtained her PhD in 1997 from the Faculty of Medicine in Montpellier, and after a Postdoc at UCSD (USA), she joined the CNRS in 1998, where she studied the mechanisms of cell death in myocardial infarction for the development of cardioprotective strategies.
She heads the cardioprotection team at the IGF since 2011. She has published 46 articles and 2 patents.
- Preclinical models for studying cardiac pathology in vivo.
- Mechanism of myocardial regulated cell death
- Anti-apoptotic cardioprotective strategies
Stéphanie BARRERE-LEMAIRE
Co-founder, CSO
Biochemist by training, she obtained her PhD in 2004 from the Freie Universität in Berlin (Germany), developing interfering peptides. After a PostDoc at the University of Montpellier, where she acquired expertise in peptide vectors, she joined the CNRS as a researcher.
Her expertise in this field is illustrated by 57 publications, 5 book chapters and 4 patents.
- Peptide synthesis and purification
- Screening and development of therapeutic peptides
- Protein-protein interaction in vitro and in vivo
Prisca BOISGUERIN
Co-founder and CTO
Electrophysiologist by training, he was a professor at the University of Tours and invited Professor at the Caltech Insitute in Pasadena, CA, USA.
He joined in 1987 the CNRS in Montpellier where he developed the first electrophysiological patch clamp studies in human cardiac cells and the structure-function studies of calcium channels.
He is the author of 170 publications and 2 patents.
- Pathophysiology of calcium channels
- Pathophysiological regulation of heart rhythm
- Cardiovascular pharmacology
Joël NARGEOT
Co-founder and President of the scientific committee
Trained as a lawyer, he has 32 years' experience in the business law sector as a consultant, excluding litigation activities, with over 20 years of experience in supporting start-ups in the Montpellier region's business incubators.
He has assisted numerous companies, initially in the fund-raising phase (from €1 to €30 million).
- Legal and fiscal structuring of companies
- Fund-raising for start-ups
- Knowledge of the DeepTech ecosystem in Occitania
Éric THIEULIN
Associate and president
After completing his PhD in electrophysiology in 1992 at the University of Paris XI on ion channels in the human heart, he joined Pierre Fabre Laboratories, where he headed the Cardiovascular Diseases Division (2004-2015).
Since 2016, he has headed CVasThera, a biotech developing treatments for abdominal inflammatory diseases. He is the author of 76 publications and 19 patents.
- Pre-clinical and clinical developement of new entities.
- Cardiovascular safety.
- Industrial property strategies and relations with drug agencies
Bruno LE GRAND
Associate and Regulatory Affairs Advisor
After completing his medical thesis in Montpellier, he joined Prof. Wolf's group in San Francisco in 1995, where he discovered the anti-apoptotic effect of ischemic preconditioning in vivo.
Professor of Cardiology at the Faculty of Medicine, he has participated in a number of cardioprotection clinical trials.
Since 2013, he has been an interventional cardiologist at the Clinique du Millénaire (Montpellier).
- Specialist in reperfusion injury and apoptosis.
- Discovery of the anti-apoptotic effect of ischemic preconditioning in vivo.
- Clinical trials to evaluate cardioprotection
Christophe PIOT
Associate and CMO
He obtained his PhD in 2005 at the Institut Curie and after two Postdocs in the Netherlands and France, he joined the biotech Eurobiodev as CSO in 2012, where he developed a therapeutic antibody for the treatment of cancer.
In 2016, he was co-founder and CSO of Biodena Care, which is developing a cancer diagnostic test. He has published 13 articles and 8 patents.
- Preclinical models for in vitro and in vivo studies.
- Biotech development strategy.
- Industrial property strategies.
Alexandre PRIEUR
Associate and deeptech advisor
Our history
The beginnings of the research topic
Our team was set up in 1994 in the laboratory headed by Professor Joël Nargeot in Montpellier, when Stéphanie Barrère-Lemaire completed her doctoral thesis on “the pathophysiology of calcium channels in human cardiac cells”, in collaboration with Christophe Piot, then a cardiology intern at Montpellier University Hospital.
From 2002 onwards, the team focused his research activity on cardioprotection in myocardial infarction. In 2007, evidence was provided that the death receptor pathway mediated by the FAS-DAXX signaling cascade plays a major role in myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury (Roubille et al., Circulation 2007).
The development of our drug candidate
To develop a therapeutic approach, we chose to use FAS-DAXX decoy peptides to block activation of the FAS-DAXX apoptotic pathway.
In 2009, Prisca Boisguérin, as a postdoctoral fellow in Prof B Lebleu’s team, joined the project. Thanks to her expertise (SPOT synthesis), a screening was performed to determine interfering peptides capable of preventing the interaction between FAS and DAXX – a crucial interaction mediating apoptosis during reperfusion injury.
This project – named CardioPep – was the subject of a collaboration with Laboratoires Servier (between 2013 and 2016), which was our first contact with a pharmaceutical company.
Our wish to create ApoRepair
After this experience with an industrial company, the scientific team wanted to create a start-up with the support of the Eurobiodev team in December 2019. However, the worldwide epidemic crisis linked to COVID put a stop to this initiative. In 2021 and 2022, the scientific team took part in several training courses (Deeptech founder included in RISE program from CNRS Innovation and Jump’in Creation from the BIC incubator in Montpellier).
In 2023, the three scientists and co-founders Stéphanie Barrère-Lemaire, Joël Nargeot and Prisca Boisguérin then partnered with Eric Thieulin, Christophe Piot, Alexandre Prieur and Bruno Le Grand to create the start-up ApoRepair SAS in Montpellier.