Pierre Fabre enters new partnership with biotech firm VibioSphen

French independent pharma firm Pierre Fabre and VibioSphen, a young biotechnology company from the Toulouse region of France specializing in infectious disease, today signed a new partnership agreement.

This is within the framework of "Nature Open Library," a new and different Open Innovation program launched last December by Pierre Fabre to share its private plants' collection and its expertise of the whole phyto-industrial value chain with innovating companies from all sectors (The Pharma Letter December 8, 2016). Following a first partnership signed in February 2016 with the British biotechnology company Plasticell, this new collaboration is the second one that falls within the framework of this initiative.

VibioSphen will first screen Pierre Fabre's plants' collection, one of the most important in the industry, numbering over 15.000 classified samples and phyto-chemical compounds. Via this targeted screening, VibioSphen will try to identify new natural molecules which could be tested afterwards on several models of infectious diseases. Under the terms of the agreement, if this screening phase is carried out successfully, Pierre Fabre Laboratories will then become VibioSphen's preferred partners for the further development of identified molecules.