French drugmaker Sanofi and Britain’s AstraZeneca said on Friday they had agreed a direct exchange of 210,000 chemical compounds from their respective libraries in a new twist on the drive to boost open innovation.
In a bid to increase the number of leads for new medicines, and save both time and money, pharmaceutical companies are experimenting with novel ways to share early-stage research.
Other examples in recent years include partnership deals and the creation of consortia, often with academia, based on pooled research in certain disease areas, before the work reaches the competitive stage of developing patented medicines.
