Sanofi has inked a partnership with clinical study tech company TrialSpark in an effort to leverage novel methods to help identify and bring new drugs to market.
The two companies will focus their efforts on the licensing and development of phase 2 and phase 3 drug candidates. The partnership aims to encompass six transactions over the next three years.
TrialSpark’s platform is designed to optimize all aspects of clinical drug development to accelerate trials. The company’s modus operandi is to acquire clinical-stage drugs from pharma and biotech and then apply its own tech to develop them faster. Its most recent acquisition was the potential osteoarthritis treatment sprifermin, which it licensed from Germany’s Merck KGaA in January.
TrialSpark will be able to leverage pharma giant Sanofi’s commercial expertise and its own tech capabilities in behavioral intervention and digital tools to achieve better patient outcomes, the companies said. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
“This collaboration will not only identify attractive late-stage assets, but will also use innovative development plans which could bring meaningful outcomes to patients in areas of mutual interest,” Alban de La Sablière, Sanofi’s head of partnering, said in a release.
The announcement was light on details of the specific disease areas the two companies would look at beyond addressing “unmet patient needs.” So far, TrialSpark’s work has focused on rheumatology, cardiometabolic conditions, dermatology and the central nervous system.