NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Hurel today said that it has entered into a research and development collaboration with Sanofi to evaluate the use of Hurel's cell-based products and technologies for preclinical drug development.
The collaboration will take place in Hurel's laboratories in New Brunswick, NJ, and in Sanofi's R&D facilities in the US and Europe. The initial phase of the agreement will seek to validate Hurel's HurelHuman 3D liver tissue co-culture for use "across an array of experimental requirements" that usually are addressed during the preclinical phase of drug discovery and development, Hurel said.
Such applications include toxicological studies and studies of drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics. The HurelHuman in vitro liver construct uses a co-culture of primary cryopreserved human hepatocytes "to deliver highly sensitive and accurate predictions of the liver-mediated effects of drugs on humans," Hurel said.
Hurel and Sanofi plan to share results from the collaboration through co-authored, peer-reviewed scientific publications.
Further, the two companies plan to broaden the range of validated applications as part of the collaboration to include Hurel's HurelFlow microfluidic assay platform.
Financial and other terms were not disclosed.