Dive Brief:
- Sanofi Pasteur, the French company's global vaccine unit, will partner with the U.S. Army's Walter Reed Army Institute of Research to co-develop the latter's Zika vaccine technology, the two groups announced on Wednesday.
- Under the agreement, the Institute will transfer its vaccine technology based on a Zika purified inactivated virus to Sanofi. While the technology transfer concludes, the Institute will conduct phase I trials in collaboration with various government health divisions.
- In exchange, Sanofi will be responsible for phase II testing, a clinical development strategy, a regulatory strategy, production yield optimization and eventual characterization of the vaccine.
Dive Insight:
The announcement reveals Sanofi's ambition to develop the first Zika vaccine, both for the immediate global health emergency and as part of its long-term vaccine portfolio.
“We’re looking at this from both a short- and long-term perspective, collaborating to get into the clinic quicker to provide a vaccine in response to the current emergency, and adapting our own technology to ensure production capacity of a vaccine for years to come," said David Loew, Executive VP and Head of Sanofi Pasteur, in a statement.
The agreement with the Army Institute provides Sanofi with a promising short-term solution for Zika.
Preclinical trials of Zika purified inactivated virus vaccines showed 100% protection against Zika in mice, and suggest "the development of a [Zika] vaccine for humans will likely be readily achievable," according to the results published on Nature.
Sanofi's agreement with the institute capitalizes on these positive results to expedite the drug development process through public-private partnerships, as was urged by President Obama in a statement to Congress last week. Congress is slated to vote on $1.1 billion in emergency funds, which includes funding for accelerated research projects, by the end of this week.
Yet Sanofi is also hedging its bets, looking at its own technology for a possible Zika vaccine.
Last December, prior to the Zika virus' outbreak, Sanofi won approval for its dengue vaccine–and the company hopes to use its Dengue-know-how to develop a similar vaccine for Zika. Dengue, yellow fever and Zika all belong to the flavivirus family, which suggests they could be treated with the same surface-molecule technology.
Clinical trials for this project have not yet started, however, and could take up to three years according to an earlier BioPharma Dive interview with Sanofi's Chief Scientific Officer.
Of course, Sanofi is not alone in its efforts to develop a Zika vaccine: Japan's Takeda, Pfizer, Merck, and India-based Bharat Biotech have also announced efforts to provide a solution. The French company's agreement with the U.S. Army institute may therefore prove pivotal in the race for a preventative treatment.