Sanofi and Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft create new centre of excellence

Sanofi has allied with leading applied research organisation Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft to create a new natural product centre of excellence.

The facility will be used to accelerate the discovery and development of new therapies to treat infectious diseases by analysing the genetic makeup of various strains, cultivating them in different conditions, stimulating them to produce active substances and investigating the effects.

This will allow them to identify and optimise novel naturally-occurring chemical or biological compounds, mainly in the field of infectious diseases, with many of its discoveries also extending to indications such as diabetes, pain and rare diseases.

Dr Elias Zerhouni, president for global research and development at Sanofi, said: "Internal and external scientists will work together as one team on common projects in shared labs to acquire new knowledge, with the objective to bring new medicines to patients suffering from infectious diseases."

This comes after Sanofi subsidiary Genzyme agreed to work together with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals to develop new therapies for rare genetic diseases earlier this month.