NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Spain's Centre for Genomic Regulation (Centre de Regulació Genòmica – CRG) and French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi have launched a partnership to pursue collaborative research projects in medical genetics, epigenetics, and computational biology that will focus on studies of genetic and rare diseases.
The partners will share scientific resources, structures and information, technologies, and human know-how in studies that will involve experimental platforms and computational and bioinformatics approaches, said CRG, which is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Catalan Government.
CRG and Sanofi have already launched a set of collaborative projects including efforts to identify original targets from unexploited genomic transcription mechanisms; use synthetic biology to develop novel medical delivery systems; study cellular trans-differentiation pathways relevant to diseases; and to discover therapeutic approaches for infectious diseases.
CRG said that the partners will continue to select more projects to pursue together during the three-year agreement.
"Through this agreement Sanofi will have increased access to globally cutting-edge research and the CRG will be linked to a major company that can ensure the translation of research into real-life solutions for patients," CRG Director Luis Serrano said in a statement.
"This collaboration is a multi-disciplinary approach with our internal Exploratory Unit and a major R&D centre in Europe, aimed at accelerating the pace of translating early disruptive science into validated concepts that will lead to health solutions for patients and create added value to the public investment in basic research," added Maya Said, VP of strategy, science policy, and external innovation at Sanofi R&D.