AstraZeneca and Sanofi to exchange compounds
In an unusual move AstraZeneca and
Sanofi will exchange 210,000 compounds in order to boost their libraries and
help launch more drug discovery programmes.
The companies have selected the
compounds to exchange based on differences from those in their own libraries.
Each company will receive sufficient quantities to enable high throughput
screening for several years to determine whether they are active against
specific biological targets AZ and Sanofi will also share chemical structures
and synthetic procedures to facilitate the use of the compounds.
Each company can investigate the
compounds it receives without restrictions on disease areas.
“This is a highly innovative agreement
which speaks to our open innovation approach,” said Mene Pangalos, executive
vice president of innovative medicines and early development at AstraZeneca.
“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.”
Elias Zerhouni, president of global
R&D at Sanofi added: “Sanofi is committed to open innovation in our R&D
platforms because we recognise that collaboration is the foundation of every
medical breakthrough. We are happy to partner with other companies if it will
speed the discovery of new life-saving or life-enhancing therapies for
patients.” There are no payments associated with the compound exchange.
Three more partnerships for AZ
AZ has also announced three new
partnerships aimed at helping its new MRC UK Centre for Lead Discovery, which
will be located within the company’s new global R&D centre at the Cambridge
Biomedical Campus, in the search for novel small molecule medicines.
The first is a three-year agreement
with HighRes Biosolutions, a global provider of automated robotic systems to
the life sciences industry, to develop next generation, intelligent robots for
the high throughput screening of compounds.
AZ has also announced a strategic
partnership to use the energy of sound waves to dispense compounds directly
from individual storage tubes into well plates for testing. This comprises fully-automated
liquid handling by Labcyte, automated liquid storage systems by Brooks
Automation, and a co-developed acoustic sample storage tube.
Finally, the company is hoping that a
five-year collaboration with Genedata, a provider of advanced software solutions
for drug discovery and life science research will speed data sharing with
partners.
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