The $3.1m deal is believed to help gain deep insights into the insulin-producing beta cells which are destroyed in type 1 diabetes and produce little insulin in type 2 diabetes.
The alliance will assess and validate potential drug targets from a UCSF library of nearly 100,000 small interference RNAs (siRNA) that play a key role in turning on and off genes, including the gene that produces insulin.
Under the collaboration, the team will also identify Sanofi compounds that might be effective in regulating those molecules, study the impact those compounds have on UCSF laboratory models of diabetes and assess their therapeutic potential.
UCSF Diabetes Center director Matthias Hebrok said the deal will combine the expertise of UCSF in understanding the biology of diabetes and Sanofi’s abilities in screening compounds, identifying which molecules have potential and moving them along to develop a new drug.