Sanofi teams up with VBI Vaccines to improve vaccine stability

Sanofi has been on a partnering roll lately and is continuing its streak with a new pact with VBI Vaccines.

VBI ($VBIV) announced Monday that it is collaborating with Sanofi's ($SNY) vaccines unit to apply its Lipid Particle Vaccine (LPV) to improve the stability of an undisclosed Sanofi Pasteur candidate. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

VBI's mission is to develop new technologies to help expand vaccine protection in large underserved markets. The unnamed vaccine is a "key" candidate in Sanofi Pasteur's pipeline and will be reformulated using the LPV technology, which could potentially confer thermostability up to 40ºC, according to a statement. This enables the production of vaccines and biologics that can withstand fluctuating temperatures during shipment, the company said.

"VBI is proud to be working with Sanofi Pasteur, a significant global vaccine manufacturer, to provide a more stable formulation of one of its key pipeline assets," said Jeff Baxter, president and CEO of Cambridge, MA-based VBI Vaccines, in a statement. "Our LPV technology has shown great promise in stabilizing vaccines and biologics of a variety of classes and targets. This collaboration reinforces the potential of our technology."

The collaboration is one of a series for Sanofi. In 2011, Sanofi Pasteur and Germany's CureVac teamed up to use the latter's RNActive technology to develop vaccines against several infectious diseases. Three years later, in 2014, they expanded their partnership with a deal that gave Sanofi rights to a new mRNA-based vaccine.

And in October 2014, Sanofi signed a deal with Immune Design in hopes to use the latter's GLAAS technology to galvanize the immune response from a herpes vaccine, after it tapped the GLAAS platform to develop new treatments for food allergies.

- read the release

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