Sanofi and Belharra Therapeutics have entered into a $700m strategic collaboration to advance the discovery of small molecule therapeutics for immunological diseases.
The partnership will utilise Belharra’s proprietary non-covalent chemoproteomics platform to screen and validate small molecules against immunology targets chosen by Sanofi, which will lead further preclinical, clinical and commercial activities for selected candidates.
In exchange, Belharra will be eligible to receive up to $40m in upfront and near-term milestone payments, with a potential total deal value of almost $700m over the course of the collaboration in research, development and commercial milestone payments, as well as tiered royalties on net sales.
Sanofi’s immunology portfolio already includes treatments for atopic dermatitis, severe asthma and rheumatoid arthritis.
John Bertin, global head of immunology and inflammation research at Sanofi, said: “By leveraging Belharra’s chemoproteomics platform, we hope to explore immunology targets that, to date, have been considered undruggable.”
Belharra outlined that its platform leverages a “computationally designed library of non-covalent drug-like molecules that use photoaffinity chemistry to identify which proteins bind the molecules as well as the precise binding location on the target proteins”.
The company has already used the platform to build an internal pipeline focused on oncology and immunology.
“With the ability to illuminate any pocket, on any protein, in any cell type, our platform enables perhaps the broadest and most unbiased chemoproteomic screening capabilities in the industry,” said Belharra’s chief executive officer, Jeff Jonker.
Jonker added that the company is “thrilled to simultaneously engage with therapeutic area leaders like Sanofi to maximise the platform’s potential to discover a wave of new… drugs for unmet patient needs”.
The deal comes just one month after Sanofi, Formation Bio and OpenAI announced an artificial intelligence collaboration aimed at accelerating drug development and bringing new medicines to patients more efficiently.
The partnership will see the three teams bring together data, software and tuned models to develop custom, purpose-built solutions across the drug development lifecycle.
Sanofi also recently entered into a licensing agreement worth over $1.2bn to co-commercialise Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine and develop combination vaccines for COVID-19 and influenza.