Genentech, Sanofi Ink Academic Pacts

The University of California, San Francisco, has signed a partnership agreement with Genentech, now a division of Roche, to discover and develop drug candidates for neurodegenerative diseases.

Meanwhile, Sanofi-Aventis has formed an agreement with the French Life Sciences & Healthcare Alliance, which is comprised of several French research institutions, including Institut Pasteur and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).

Under the Genentech/UCSF agreement, Genentech will provide funding and research know-how in support of researchers at UCSF's Small Molecule Discovery Center (SMDC), which is administered by the university's School of Pharmacy at the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences.

In addition to undisclosed initial funding, UCSF could receive up to $13 million in development and commercial milestone payments from Genentech.

The deal is SMDC's first major collaboration, according to Jim Wells, founder and director of the five-year-old center. "This is different from a standard out-license or simple research collaboration," Wells says. "This collaboration shows how a center like the SMDC can help support the path from new biology into therapeutic products to help improve patients' lives."

The center employs high-throughput screening, medicinal chemistry, and fragment-based screening, including a novel approach called "tethering" that Wells developed as the chief scientific officer of Sunesis Pharmaceuticals. SMDC is one of several university centers conducting drug discovery in partnership with pharmaceutical firms (C&EN, Feb. 22, page 12).

The aim of the Sanofi Aventis/French Life Sciences & Healthcare Alliance partnership is to bolster research in France by enhancing scientific knowledge in the areas of life sciences and healthcare. Sanofi says the agreement could take the form of mutual teams, technology platforms, or even research centers.

The drug company has also entered a corporate sponsorship program with CNRS and the National Institute of Health & Medical Research to support young researchers setting up laboratories in France. Sanofi says it will invest as much as $65 million in the two programs over five years.