Onduo_Google joint venture with Sanofi for Diabetes treatment
Google and French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi
has announced a new joint venture focused on diabetes care.
The tie-up between the drug maker and Verily,
the health subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet, will focus on
treatments for people living with the chronic lifestyle disease.
Details on what the company's products will
look like - or when they will reach the market -- were scant, but they will
combine the drugmaker's
clinical know-how with the tech company's background in analytics and mini
devices, a joint statement said.
"As
it will initially consist of connecting already existing products, we can
expect the first innovations to arrive more quickly than if it was a
pharmaceutical research programme starting from scratch," the head of
Sanofi's diabetes business, Stefan Oelrich, told AFP.
The venture, called Onduo,
will initially focus on type-2 diabetes, the more common form of the disease.
The prevalence of type-2 diabetes is soaring globally as obesity rates also
rise.
Eventually, Onduo plans to expand its
business to type-1 diabetes, an autoimmune disorder that requires daily
insulin, and eventually those at risk of developing the disease.
Sanofi has invested $248 million in the
venture, with Verily putting in an "equivalent" amount, according to
Oelrich.
The new company will be based in the US town
of Cambridge, near Boston, the epicentre of the global biotechnology and the
pharmaceutical industries, where Sanofi already has a presence.
Verily was born out of Google's X lab and has
previously partnered with other pharma giants, including Johnson & Johnson
to develop surgical robots and in a bioelectronic venture with UK-based
GlaxoSmithKline.
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