The consulting firm Janus Development, with offices at the Barcelona Science Park, has signed an agreement with the company Archivel Farma in order to reinforce the strategic and operative management of the latter and to consolidate its business model, with the objective of enabling Archivel to successfully handle the growth that it is projected to carry out starting in 2011. Janus will therefore contribute to the completion of the work that was carried out by Jose Luís Cabero, the current general director of the firm, who will leave his position at the end of April in order to participate in another project.

Archivel Farma, a biotech that develops a vaccine against latent tuberculosis infection, has announced that over the course of the next three years it hopes to obtain data on the clinical efficacy of its therapeutic vaccine, RUTI©, strengthen its research lines with new developments and exploit the productive capacity of its biological products manufacturing plant in Badalona, which has just been homologated by the Spanish Drug Agency to produce sterile biologic drugs for therapeutic use.

In order to tackle this new phase, Archivel has reinforced its administration board with the incorporation of two independent members: Antonio Parente, president of the Lipotec Group and the Catalonia Bio Association, and Lluís Ruiz-Ávila, chief executive officer of Janus, who will also be in charge of the general management of the company during this time.

Archivel Farma was founded in 2005 by Archivel Technologies. At present it boasts a team comprised of 17 people and an extensive network of national and international partners and consultants. The company’s technological base, the RUTI® vaccine, was created in the Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital of Badalona as a result of the research work conducted by Pere-Joan Cardona and Isabel Amat. Since the incorporation of FonsInnocat, a capital risk fund managed by Highgrowth Partners, in 2005, the company has invested nearly 8 million Euros in RUTI® research, which has already demonstrated its safety and action in healthy volunteers.

In 2009, it sealed a capital increase in which Archivel Technology and FonsInnocat participated, as well as a new investor: the Agora group. The social capital is currently distributed amongst the three partners who hold 63%, 27% and 10% of shares, respectively.

Janus Developments consists of a team of 6 people and approximately 20 national and international partners and consultants who participate in several business and biotechnological development projects. The firm is linked to the PCB-Santander Bioincubator and its mission is to transform biomedical knowledge into economic and social value. Since its creation in May 2009, Janus has initiated the development of seven patented technologies with an academic origin for which they have acquired the exclusive rights of development and exploitation. All technologies are aimed at unresolved therapeutic needs, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, phenylketonuria, metastasis prevention, several types of lymphomas, liver transplant or inflammatory bowel disease.

Tuberculosis is an infectious disease that causes the highest number of deaths at a worldwide level following AIDS. It is calculated that each year 100 million people become infected, but most are not aware of it. 10% of these people will, however, develop the pathology at some point in their lives. The risk increases in people who are treated with immunosupressors. For this reason, the World Health Organization underscores the relevance of its programme “STOP TB”, which aims to reduce the impact and incidence of this disease from now until 2015.