Sanofi Pasteur and IDRI partner on vaccine R&D center

In an effort to accelerate timelines and decrease development costs of life-saving vaccines, the US Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) and Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of French pharma major Sanofi (Euronext: SAN) have established the Global Health Vaccine Center of Innovation (GHVCI), to be headquartered at IDRI in Seattle.

This project is also funded in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as the proposed R&D alliance is related to the Gates Foundation and Sanofi Pasteur's strategic agreement on a vaccine discovery partnership signed in 2013.

The addition of IDRI, a non-profit organization, will enable vaccine adjuvant/formulation platforms and a pipeline of vaccine candidates to be discovered, evaluated and developed to address a range of infectious diseases under the center of innovation based at IDRI. The GHVCI will be co-funded by the Gates Foundation and Sanofi Pasteur under a tripartite agreement.