Insomnia: a treatment imagined by two French people approved in the United States

Notice to insomniacs: a solution could be found. The Swiss biotechnology company Idorsia, created by the French Jean-Paul and Martine Clozel, obtained its first approval in the United States for a treatment against insomnia, marking an important step for the company. The American drug agency, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has given the green light to the marketing of its treatment called daridorexant, which will be marketed under the name Quviviq, in doses of 25 mg and 50 mg, announced Monday the company in a press release.

The authorization was granted on the basis of a phase III clinical study carried out on 1,854 adults in 160 sites in 18 countries. This treatment for insomnia, which affects some 25 million people in the United States, says Idorsia, is expected to hit the US market in May. Created in 2017, Idorsia was born from the transfer of part of the research work from Actelion, the company previously founded by the Clozel couple.

Already at the origin of a treatment against arterial hypertension

Passionate about medical research, the couple who had met on the benches of the Faculty of Medicine of Nancy built a solid reputation in research on rare diseases through this company in which he had developed the Tracleer. , drug for idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension. Actelion had established itself as the first biotech in Europe, coveted by all the big names in the pharmaceutical industry, until the American giant Johnson & Johnson spent $ 30 billion in 2017 to seize it.

During the takeover, Jean-Paul Clozel had said he wanted to continue his research by creating a new start-up called Idorsia at the age of over 60. The agreement with Johnson & Johnson provided for the transfer of part of the research then underway at Actelion to this new entity, based in Allschwil, on the outskirts of Basel, the heart of the pharmaceutical industry in Switzerland.

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After having opened up more than 9% after the announcement of this first approval, the title gave up part of its initial gains, appreciating by 4.75% at 11:25 GMT, to 20.30 Swiss francs, against -trend of the SPI, the broad index of the Swiss Stock Exchange, down 0.83%. This approval marks “a very important step” for Idorsia, reacted Stefan Schneider, analyst at Vontobel, in a stock market commentary. He estimates the sales of this treatment, at their peak, at 1.3 billion Swiss francs (1.2 billion euros).