Curie-Cancer and Sanofi cooperate in research on ovarian cancer
Preclinical programme of translational research tasked with identifying new target proteins in three-year research partnership
Sanofi has established a three-year research partnership with the Curie Institute in Paris, under the Institut Carnot label, to identify new therapeutic targets for the development of treatments for ovarian cancer.
The aim of the collaboration is to revisit the basic biology of this type of cancer through a translational research approach.
The Institut Curie has a large collection of cryopreserved tumour samples that are well characterised clinically, histologically and biologically. These can be analysed to identify biological targets relevant to the effective treatment of certain types of cancer.
Sanofi and Curie-Cancer expect to gain a better understanding of the molecular alterations that characterise many types of ovarian cancer, thereby enabling effective new drugs to be designed.
‘We hope this type of long-term collaboration will ultimately open up perspectives for new therapeutic options for women with this disease. It will combine the accumulated knowledge on ovarian cancer gathered over many years by oncologists and biologists at the Institut Curie with the expertise of researchers from Sanofi's research and product development teams,’ said Debasish Roychowdhury, Senior Vice President and Head of Sanofi Oncology.
Damien Salauze, Director of Curie-Cancer, added: ‘It is currently hard to tackle ovarian cancer. There are very few drugs available. We are very happy to collaborate with Sanofi to potentially provide our patients with additional therapeutic solutions.’
Using technology platforms developed at the Institut Curie, this programme will make it possible to sequence molecules expressed by the tumour genome, compare the sequences of those obtained with non-tumour tissues from the same patients and then clarify and validate the nature of the molecular alterations that are identified. Sanofi's expertise in the selection of therapeutic targets will then guide an assessment of the tumour’s ability to be inhibited or stimulated by drugs.