Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of Sanofi, announced today partnership with the Bill and Mellinda Gates Foundation to explore and develop new platforms and methods intended to accelerate vaccone R&D, particularly in areas of global health. The announcement was made at the Grand Challenges in Global Health meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil during a session focused on affordable technologies for the devloping world. The conference initiated by the Gates Foundatuion was first held in 2003 to focus on persistent chalenges in improving health and development in poor countries.

The vaccine Discovery Partnership (VxDP) is newly created, formal mechnaism by which the Gates Foundation can directly collaborate with Sanofi Pasteur and other vaccine-pharmaceutical companies across disease areas of interest. It provides an integrated, straight-forward and sustained relation based on a memorandum of understnading (MOU). "The MOU with the Gates Foundation facilitates our working together to de-risk novel concepts, technologies, platforms, and approches of mutual interest," explaining John Shiver, PhD, Senior VP of R&D for Sanofi Pasteur. "This program provides a mechanism to pursue R&D of new candidate vaccines for global health in preclinical and clinical phases up to and including Phase IIa clinical trials," he added.

According to Shiver, the partnership allows the Gates Foundation and its pharmaceutical partners to accelerate the development of candidate vaccines for use in developing countries, while allowing the pharmaceutical partners to develop and test new technologies that also will advance their other R&D programs. This VxDP spearheaded by the Gates Foundation is expected to result in decreased cost and time required to develop successful vaccines.

"Vaccines are one fo the most powerful tools to save and improve life," said Trevor Mundel, prsident of Global health at the Bill & mellinda gates Foundation. " This partnership will help accelerate research and development of effective and affordable vaccines that will ultimately benefit the world's poorest people and I'm pleased that Sanofi is contributing their expertise and resources."

Further Mr Shiver added "These challenging projects would be difficult for any one organization to fund without Partnership". "The Gates Foundation is commited to supporting these pilots while we will contribute matching resources and expertise, as well as commit to guaranteeing that advances will support those who need them most through global access provisions."