Google, Sanofi Team Up on Diabetes Research
August 31 2015 - 11:20AM
Dow Jones News
Google Inc. said Monday its health-care-research unit agreed to
work with European pharmaceutical major Sanofi SA on new ways to
monitor and treat diabetes.
The companies declined to say how much they are investing in the
partnership.
Sanofi is a leading maker of diabetes medication, as well as
many other drugs. Google's Life Sciences division is working on
small, connected medical devices to continuously collect
diabetes-related data, as well as software that learns from the
information to find new treatments. Diabetes is expected to affect
592 million people world-wide by 2035, according to the
International Diabetes Federation.
Pascale Witz, head of Sanofi's Global Diabetes and
Cardiovascular Care business, is leading the collaboration.
Google Life Sciences, led by Andrew Conrad, started about two
years ago as part of the company's ambitious goal to expand beyond
its Internet search roots into big industries such as health care
and transportation. Some of these efforts have stumbled, but Google
Life Sciences has made steady progress through in-house research
and partnerships with companies such as Novartis AG and Biogen Inc.
The life-sciences division will become a stand-alone unit in
Google's planned reorganization into a holding company called
Alphabet Inc.
Mr. Conrad said the Sanofi partnership is the latest of several
collaborations that combine expertise in medication, medical
devices, software and computing infrastructure. That
multidisciplined approach is needed to effectively treat diabetes,
but has been rare to date, he explained.
An existing partnership with Novartis's Alcon eye-care division
aims to take a Google-designed contact lens that measures glucose
in tears of diabetics into high-volume production and large-scale
human trials overseen by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in
2016.
Another Google partnership with Dexcom Inc., a maker of
continuous glucose-monitoring devices, is developing a cheap,
disposable device the size of a Band-Aid that can be worn on the
skin and send blood-sugar measurements to a smartphone, as well as
Google.
"With Sanofi we can complete the picture of how diabetes unfolds
and try to interrupt that development through a proactive and
preventive approach," Mr. Conrad said in an interview.
He said Sanofi's experience making insulin—which controls
diabetics' blood sugar levels—might help Google design smaller,
Internet-connected devices that could automatically suggest or
adjust insulin dosages in response to blood-sugar readings or
doctor-prescribed patient exercise regimes.
Diabetes treatments accounted for 21% of Sanofi's 2014 revenue
of €34 billion ($38 billion). But the business is under pressure as
its top-selling Lantus insulin loses patent protection this year.
Reviving this business is a priority for new Chief Executive
Olivier Brandicourt and teaming up with Google Life Sciences may
help.
"Our goal is to provide holistic, integrated solutions that
combine medicines, devices, technologies and services, to improve
patient outcomes," Ms. Witz said in an email.
Write to Alistair Barr at alistair.barr@wsj.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 31, 2015 11:05 ET (15:05 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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