Ask a summer tourist the prime attraction of Paris and the apt response will be the museums, the restaurants and the shopping.  But for investors around the globe the answer is HealthTech Investor Days, an event sponsored by France Biotech, an association of French entrepreneurs in the life sciences.

In the past decade, France has established a vibrant biotech sector with a decided focus on clinical drug development.  Indeed, several international pharma brands, including Sanofi S.A., Servier Laboratories, Ipsen, Pierre Fabre and LFB Biotechnologies, are French companies.

Today, the French healthcare sector is comprised of over 1,800 companies, according to a survey conducted by France Biotech.  This includes 720 biotech companies, 73 bio-cleantech companies, 886 companies specialized in medical devices and diagnostics and 200 companies focusing on eHealth.

Drawing the investors from around the world to Paris is the opportunity to meet the more than 70 participating companies across biotech, medtech and digital health. The event is expected to attract Asian investment heavyweights like Cathay Innovation and Hermed Capital.  And from the U.S., participants will include Bridgepoint, Watermill Asset Management, OrbiMed, and H.C. Wainwright & Co, which are known to hunt for promising investment ideas.

Sofinnova Partners, a Paris-based investment firm with a focus on the E.U., will also be on hand in support of companies that are existing investments and to learn alongside its counterparts.

To qualify, participating companies need only a market cap of around €20 million.  But these so-called start-ups will be coupled with a clutch of unicorn-like heavy-hitters, offering successful business track records.

One example is Nanobiotix, a Paris-based nanomedicine company developing therapies to enhance the effect that radiation therapy has on various cancers. The Euronext Paris-listed company (EPA: NANO) has garnered increased investor interest since receiving a CE Marking certification for its first therapy, Hensify, for soft tissue sarcoma. This treatment works with a single injection prior to starting a radiation protocol.  By allowing a tumor to absorb up to nine times more radiation than normal, Hensify leads to greater treatment efficacy, with reduced amounts and better targeting of radiation, minimizing the impact to healthy tissue.

Nanobiotix, which is planning a U.S. listing, is preparing for a late-stage clinical trial for head and neck cancer therapy.  According to Jefferies analyst Peter Welford, the head and neck cancer therapy has “blockbuster potential.”  He anticipates the stock could more than double to €23.

Nasdaq-listed Genfit (GNFT), also based in Paris, is developing a treatment for NASH, or non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, the most severe form of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).  The market opportunity is massive, up to $35 billion according to analysts. Elafibranor, Genfit’s lead therapy, is a once-daily oral therapy intended to eliminate NASH. The company is expected to publish new data this year on a late-stage NASH trial.

Genfit has also developed a blood-based diagnostic kit to test for NASH, which is being marketed to clinicians by LabCorp.  If approved by the FDA, this test would be the only blood-based biomarker alternative to a liver biopsy, the current standard of care.  Additionally, Genfit has just launched a new clinical program to test elafibranor as part of a combination therapy, as well as a new Phase 2 trial for patients with NAFLD.

In a recent report, Pasha Sarraf of SVB Leerink wrote, “We have high conviction around Elafibranor having a meaningful profile as a NASH agent.”  Sarraf has a $58 price target on the stock, which closed recently at 20.39.

Pharnext (Euronext: ALPHA) is yet another of the leading companies headlining the Paris investor event.  This Paris-based biotech harnesses big data to identify new drug development opportunities by creating new combinations of FDA-approved drugs and targeting them to diseases with no known treatments. By combining previously-approved drugs, the company is able to shorten the typical 15-to-20-year drug approval process by as much as seven years.

Pharnext is currently working on drugs for a range of neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson’s Disease and Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease (CMT1a). Late last year, Pharnext announced positive topline results for its pivotal Phase 3 trial of PXT3003 for the treatment of CMT1a. A recently published report by Parisian equity research firm Kepler Chevreux noted the drug’s demonstrated and promising efficacy, stating that it “could become the gold standard for treating patients with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease Type 1A.”

In February of 2019, the FDA assigned the drug Fast Track designation. Pharnext plans to file for approval in the U.S. and Europe in the second half of this year and bring the drug to market in 2020. Using the same big data networking model, Pharnext has also developed a drug addressing diseases such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and Alzheimer’s Disease, PXT 864, which is in Phase 2 trials and has yielded encouraging results so far. The CEO of Pharnext is Dr. Daniel Cohen, a pioneer in the use of big data in biology.