Sanofi (NASDAQ: SNY; EPA: SAN), a major French pharmaceutical company, has formed a collaboration with U.S.-based Belharra Therapeutics, a chemoproteomics company focused on the development of small-molecule cancer drugs targeting high-value, elusive drug targets. As per the agreement, Belharra will utilize its non-covalent chemoproteomics platform to screen for hits against Sanofi-selected targets in the immunology space. Belharra will receive an upfront payment of USD 40 million, with development and commercial milestone commitments totaling nearly USD 700 million. Additionally, Sanofi will pay royalties on future net sales of emerging drug candidates.
Belharra’s platform uses a computationally designed library of non-covalent drug-like molecules that employ photoaffinity chemistry to identify protein-molecule bindings and the exact binding locations on target proteins. The goal is to uncover any binding pocket on any protein or protein-protein interaction, in any cell type, enabling the discovery of new drugs for previously ‘undruggable’ targets.- Flcube.com
