Sanofi and Selecta Biosciences announce new allergy collaboration

Sanofi and Selecta Biosciences have announced a new collaboration that will see them jointly developing a number of new allergy therapies.

Under the terms of the strategic global alliance, the companies will be allying to discover highly targeted, antigen-specific immunotherapies for life-threatening allergies, using Selecta's synthetic vaccine particle technology.

Sanofi will receive an exclusive licence to develop an immunotherapy designed to abate acute immune responses against a chosen food allergen and an option to create two additional candidate immunotherapies.

Selecta's technology platform has unique capabilities to engineer nanoparticles with the ideal structure and composition to produce immune tolerance by balancing the overactive response to specific allergy-causing antigens. 

Dr Werner Cautreels, Selecta's president and chief executive officer, said: "We are very pleased that Sanofi, a global leader in vaccines and immunology, is entering into a partnership with Selecta to develop and commercialise products from our immunotherapy platform."

Earlier this year, Sanofi announced another new collaboration with the TB Alliance, which will focus on the development of new therapies for tuberculosis.