SNY Sanofi

By Inti Landauro 

Sanofi SA has teamed up with Verily Life Sciences LLC, a unit of Google parent Alphabet, to develop high-tech tools for managing diabetes.

The French pharmaceutical group said the new company, called Onduo, would combine its expertise in diabetes medicine with Verily's knowledge of miniaturized electronics, analytics and software development. The companies didn't disclose the financial details of the deal.

People with diabetes must monitor their food intake and exercise levels as well as sticking to an often complex treatment regimen to manage the disease.

Joshua Riff, the former UnitedHealth executive who will lead the new company, said the aim of Onduo was to "allow people living with diabetes to focus on the things they love and enjoy in life by providing tools to make dealing with their diabetes less burdensome."

It said the collaboration would initially focus on type two diabetes, the much more common form of the disease. This affects around 90% of all diabetes patients and occurs when the body produces insulin but is unable to use it effectively. In the early stages it can be managed by switching to a healthier diet and increasing exercise, but as it progresses treatment becomes more complex and expensive, ultimately involving carefully-managed insulin injections.

Diabetes, a fast-growing disease expected to affect 592 million people world-wide by 2035, is a hot area for pharmaceutical and tech tie-ups. Last year Novo Nordisk A/S and IBM's Watson Health started working together on a "virtual doctor" that could dispense treatment advice such as insulin dosage. And Verily and Novartis AG are codeveloping a "smart contact lens" to monitor blood-sugar levels in people with diabetes.

Google has joined forces with big pharmaceutical companies across a broad range of disease areas in recent years. Those collaborations include a tie-up with GlaxoSmithKline PLC to develop "bioelectronic" treatments that work on nerve pathways to address medical issues, a collaboration with Johnson & Johnson to develop robots to assist surgeons, and a project with Biogen Idec Inc. to analyze why multiple sclerosis progresses differently from patient to patient.

Sanofi is one of the world's biggest makers of diabetes drugs, though that part of the business is under pressure from increasingly cost-conscious health systems. The company expects revenue from diabetes drugs to decline over the coming years as competition between insulin makers intensifies.

Write to Inti Landauro at inti.landauro@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 12, 2016 07:15 ET (11:15 GMT)

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