NFL Biosciences botanical pharmaceutical agent was initially developed by the Pasteur Institute in France as an allergenic extract used for the desensitization of tobacco factories' workers suffering from allergies to the manipulation of tobacco leaves.

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Commercialized by Stallergenes until 2004 the allergenic extract had been converted over the previous ten years as a smoking cessation aid by an anesthesiologist and mesotherapy practitioner in the Clinique du Parc, Orange, France, Dr. Jean-Pierre Nicolas.

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Dr. Jean-Pierre Nicolas, a founder of NFL Biosciences, was initially delivering, by subcutaneous injection, one or two (7-10 days apart) high doses of the product to smokers willing to quit, having been sent his way by their GPs or by word of mouth. Dr. Nicolas was asking patients to quit the day of the first injection and abstain from coffee and strong alcohols. The feedback from the smokers was so enthusiastic that Dr. Nicolas ended up treating 10,000 patients over 10 years. ​A retrospective analysis of a random sample of 290 patients among the 1,750 treated by Dr. Nicolas in 2003 was commissioned in 2006: it evidenced excellent safety as well as a remarkable 44% 12-month total cessation efficacy.

 

In 2006 NFL Biosciences was incorporated, a first patent was filed, and operations properly started in 2009 when Bruno Lafont, our deputy general manager, returned from the US with the mission to bring Stallergenes' allergenic extract to the market as a smoking cessation aid. Such an endeavour would require manufacturing standardization, proper extract characterization, and successful completion of pre-clinical and clinical studies, for what would soon become the NFL-101 drug candidate, aiming to cure smokers from their deadly habit.

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Today, in 2021, NFL-101 has entered a Phase II/III clinical study with a multicentric, double blind, placebo controlled clinical trial testing NFL-101, at two doses on 318-patients (CESTO2, NCT04571216).