AstraZeneca PLC Unafraid it May Have Given Sanofi a Potential Blockbuster in Drug Swap

AstraZeneca PLC Unafraid it May Have Given Sanofi a Potential Blockbuster in Drug Swap
November 24, 2015
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

On Nov. 20, 2015, London, UK-based AstraZeneca announced that it had made a deal with Paris-based Sanofi to directly exchange 210,000 compounds from their proprietary libraries. The two companies’ scientists selected compounds from each other’s libraries, and chemical structures and synthetic procedures will be shared to help facilitate drug development.

“This is a highly innovative agreement which speaks to our open innovation approach,” said Mene Pangalos, executive vice president, Innovative Medicines & Early Development at AstraZeneca in a statement. “We’ve worked hard to enrich our compound library in recent years and this exchange, which is by far the largest we have achieved, enables us to significantly increase its diversity. Most importantly, it will accelerate our ability to identify unique starting points that could become new medicines for patients.”

But aren’t the companies worried they might have traded away a future blockbuster drug? An AstraZeneca spokesperson told in-Pharma Technologist,“We are confident in the ability of our scientists to identify compounds with potential…if there is something there, we are sure we can find it ourselves.”

She also pointed out that if the two companies by chance selected the same compound to develop, “the iterative drug development process would mean any resulting medicines would be very different.”

The idea behind this swap was to accelerate the drug development process. There are no financial obligations involved in the swap, nor restrictions regarding disease areas.

Sanofi is committed to open innovation in our research and development platforms because we recognize that collaboration is the foundation of every medical breakthrough,” said Elias Zerhouni, president of Global R&D at Sanofi in a statement. “We are happy to partner with other companies if it will speed the discovery of new life-saving or life-enhancing therapies for patients. We believe that this collaboration will increase our capacity to deliver innovative solutions that have the potential to add significant medical value and transform lives.”

AstraZeneca has been busy this month. On Nov. 20, the company announced three new partnerships to drive its MRC UK Centre for Lead Discovery, which is located at its Cambridge Biomedical Campus. The partnerships include a three-year deal with HighRes Biosolutions, a provider of automated robotic systems, a strategic partnership with Brooks Automation for its Labcyte liquid handling systems, and a five-year collaboration deal with Genedata, a provider of software solutions for life sciences.

It also announced it acquired San Mateo, Calif.-based ZS Pharma for $90 per share. ZS uses ion-trap technology to develop drugs for high potassium levels (hyperkalaemia).

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