Translate Bio Expands Collaboration with Sanofi For Infectious Disease Vaccines

By Kimberly Chin

Translate Bio Inc. has expanded its collaboration and licensing agreement with Sanofi SA to develop vaccines for infectious diseases, including Covid-19, using messenger RNA therapeutics.

Sanofi will give Translate Bio $425 million up front and common stock equity in the deal. Translate Bio will also be able to get up to $1.9 billion should it hit potential milestones, as well as other payments and tiered royalties on worldwide sales of successful vaccines. Sanofi will also pay all of the collaboration's costs during the agreement term.

In exchange, Sanofi will have exclusive worldwide rights to all of the vaccines developed, Translate Bio said.

Translate Bio and Sanofi Pasteur Inc., the global vaccines business unit of Sanofi, partnered in 2018 under an exclusive license agreement to develop mRNA vaccines for up to five infectious diseases. The collaboration was expanded in March to include a new mRNA vaccine for Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Messenger RNA, or mRNA, is a piece of genetic code that carries the instructions from a person's own DNA telling cells what to do.

Moderna Inc., considered one of the front-runners in the race to find a Covid-19 vaccine, also uses mRNA to develop its potential candidate. Moderna aims to synthesize mRNA with instructions for attacking a disease or pathogen, and then give it to patients.

Write to Kimberly Chin at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 20, 2020 17:39 ET (21:39 GMT)

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