Remembering Francesco Sinigaglia, a biotech pioneer in Italy

Led the development of Oxervate to treat rare eye disease

Italian biotech pioneer Francesco Sinigaglia passed away this month after a yearslong battle with an illness that eventually left him paralyzed.

Sinigaglia was a well-respected researcher at Roche when, 20 years into his tenure at the company, the pharma decided to close the research center he founded and led, Roche Milano Ricerche, which focused on chronic inflammatory diseases.

Rather than let the center close, Sinigaglia spun it out into a new company in 2002, early days for biotech on the Continent. Spinning out a biotech was a very uncommon and bold move at that time, especially in Italy, Medicxi’s Francesco De Rubertis told BioCentury. 

De Rubertis met Sinigaglia in the early 2000s at Biotechnologia, an annual meeting organized by Fondation Santé that was commonly known as “the Greek Meeting.” He would go on to invest in the first venture round by Sinigaglia’s spinout, BioXell S.p.A.

“Over the following 20 years, he established himself as a really key figure in the Italian biotech entrepreneurship environment,” De Rubertis said. “There were not a lot of successful [biotech] CEOs in Italy” at the time.

Describing Sinigaglia as “charismatic, sharp and bold,” De Rubertis said he was a mentor to the younger generation who was always happy to give back. “A real gentleman.”

Sinigaglia took BioXell public on the Swiss stock exchange in 2006.

After BioXell was sold to Cosmo Pharmaceuticals S.p.A. in 2010, Sinigaglia became CEO of Anabasis s.r.l., which was developing an ophthalmic formulation of NGF. The company’s hope was that the product could become the first disease-modifying treatment for neurotrophic keratitis, dry eye and glaucoma.

Sofinnova Partners’ Graziano Seghezzi told BioCentury that he considered investing in Anabasis but found the IP for the lead product, Oxervate cenegermin, lacking. Still, he remembered hearing from Sinigaglia that the therapy had delivered miraculous results off-label. “I will fix it,” Seghezzi recalls Sinigaglia telling him.

Seghezzi didn’t get a chance to invest, he said, as Sinigaglia quickly shored up the IP and sold part of the company, and then all of it, to Dompe Farmaceutici S.p.A. and joined the pharma’s executive board.

“I always liked to listen to his opinions,” Seghezzi said. He was “inspirational for many of the young Italians [in] biotech.”

The European Commission approved Oxervate in 2017. FDA approved it a year later, making it the first drug in the U.S. for the rare eye disease.

By then, Sinigaglia had served as chairman of French ophthalmic therapy company Eyevensys S.A.S. and co-founded IAB, Italian Angels for Biotech.

Fulla Chapple, executive director of Fondation Santé, said Sinigaglia was “a great scientist and one of the first Italian biotech entrepreneurs,” one whom she considered part of biotech’s “Greek family.” She added, “Francesco was a lovely and gentle person, always smiling and nice with all the people who had the chance to know him.”