Sanofi has signed a collaboration and license agreement with Affilogic, a Nantes, France-based biotechnology companyi for the development of Nanofitin-conjugated biotherapeutics. Nanofitin is Affilogic’s proprietary scaffold technology.

Nanofitins are small affinity proteins that can be conjugated to other moieties (small molecule, biologics, nanoparticles) by genetic fusion or standard chemistry (regio-selective conjugation). This enables to consider a Nanofitin not only as a neutralizing agent but also as a vector to increase target-specificity or an agent to for third parties' molecules.

Under the agreement, Affilogic and Sanofi will combine research efforts to establish optimized Nanofitin-conjugated biotherapeutics and carry out further preclinical development of conjugates. Sanofi has obtained exclusivity on two different Nanofitin families and will have sole responsibility for all clinical development and commercial activities of such Nanofitin-conjugated biotherapeutics. Affilogic will grant worldwide exclusive rights to all the development projects and is entitled to receive research funding, future milestones payments, and royalties for each conjugate.

Source: Affilogic