Gennisium Pharma is betting on the quality of life in Provence to lure future employees

The laboratory has relocated its headquarters near Aix-en-Provence

Gennisium, a pharmaceutical laboratory founded in 2018 in Paris, transferred its head office to the Aix-en-Provence area in the summer of 2021, to make life a little sweeter. It is a decision conducive to attracting new employees as part of the company's expansion. Gennisium is positioned on niche drugs developed to treat pathologies in very premature babies. The small business, which found its ideal lab at Swen Parc in Vitrolles, was supported with advice from Provence Promotion on mobility and finding funding.

One in ten children worldwide is born premature, according to figures from the World Health Organization (WHO). The young Gennisium laboratory has chosen to target this market segment by developing a preparation adapted to premature babies (based on reformulation) that results in a new, safer concentration without harmful excipients. The first product from the lab is caffeine citrate, as "caffeine is one of the rare products that has met with international consensus in neonatology." According to Émilie Garcin, "It stimulates the nervous system and prevents apnea in premature babies." Garcin and is a co-founder of Gennisium, alongside Franck Pigache, the company's president. Garcin, who hails from Forcalquier in Provence, earned her doctor of pharmacy in Marseille before "heading to the capital" to start her career in a laboratory. It was only natural that she wanted to return to the land of "sun and cicadas!"

Relocation to Vitrolles in 2021

2020 was a decisive year for Gennisium, which obtained marketing authorization for its first drug Gencebok®, made with caffeine citrate, from the European Medicines Agency (EMA). This achievement accelerated the co-founders' decision to relocate to the south. In the summer of 2021, the transfer of the head office from Paris to Vitrolles became official. "Settling in the Aix region makes the company more attractive to executives," notes Émilie Garcin.

Swen Parc in Vitrolles is ideally located near the Aix-en-Provence TGV station and the Marseille-Provence airport, which is the second-largest cargo hub in France. "Our scope is international. The company's growth is based on sales to hospitals in Germany, Austria, Italy and Spain, to licensed partners in certain European countries and exports," say the two partners of this simplified joint-stock company.

Gennisium rents 500 m2, which are home to the head office and a site for storage, secondary packaging (the injectable vials are manufactured by a French supplier) and preparing air shipments. "This facility had the perfect layout, which minimized our outlay and gives us the opportunity to expand nearby", reasons Franck Pigache, who expects to hire around 25 employees within five years ‒ half in Provence and the other half in offices and subsidiaries being created.

These plans appealed to Smalt Capital, which manages the Région Sud Investissement fund and granted an equity loan that was supplemented in December 2021 with an innovation assistance package from Bpifrance. Gennisium, which is also developing a second project to reformulate a key molecule for premature babies, expects to earn its first profits as early as 2023.