Sanofi-Aventis and Johns Hopkins join forces in asthma
This article was originally published in Scrip
Executive Summary
Sanofi-Aventisand the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine are to jointly discover and develop new methods to treat respiratory diseases, in particular severe asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, as well as immuno-allergic diseases. Under a three-year agreement, the university's division of allergy and clinical immunology and the French company will work on new target identification, assay development and compound screening, and will collaborate on the design of potential clinical studies and the selection of biomarkers. Sanofi-Aventis already markets the allergy treatment Allegra (fexofenadine HCl) and has a number of NCEs at very early stages of development for asthma.