Another deal with academia for Sanofi-Aventis, which signs R&D accord with Germany's Charite University

French drug major Sanofi-Aventis said this week that it has signed a cooperation agreement for R&D on innovative medicines and therapies with the Charite Universitatsmedizin Berlin, Germany, just days after entering a research accord with the USA's Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Biomedical Innovation (The Pharma Letter May 27). Financial deals of the deal were not disclosed.

This public-private partnership, the first of this kind in Germany, according to the French drugmaker, aims at taking advantage of the joint know-how in R&D of Sanofi-Aventis and Charite to develop innovative approaches faster and make them accessible to patients. Both partners will combine their respective scientific expertise starting from preclinical research phase, much earlier than it is the case with the usual types of cooperation. Model systems, for example, will be developed and tested together, and new methods for personalized medicine will be pursued.

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