AstraZeneca and Sanofi carry out innovative compound swap

Anglo-Swedish drug major AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN) and French pharma company Sanofi (Euronext: SAN) are to carry out a direct exchange of 210,000 compounds from their respective proprietary compound libraries.

This exchange represents a novel open innovation model between pharma companies and aims to diversify and broaden the base from which companies carry out the search for new small molecules.

The compounds were selected based on differences from those in the companies’ respective libraries. Chemical structures and synthetic procedures will also be shared to allow the use of these compounds. They will be exchanged in sufficient quantities to enable the receiving company to carry out high-throughput screening for several years to determine whether they are active against specific biological targets. Should a compound match a target, it will go through several modifications to optimize its structure before being classified as a lead compound for development.