Sanofi Invests €2.5M in Novadiscovery to Advance JINKO Clinical Trial Simulation Platform and COVID-19 Disease Modeling

Compiled by Keke

Sanofi plans to invest over €2 million in Novadiscovery, a French expert in clinical trial simulation, to strengthen its COVID-19 trial development.

On February 16, medical technology company Novadiscovery (“NOVA”) announced that it had secured €2.5 million in investment from Sanofi in its Series A2 financing round. The funds will be used to advance NOVA’s electronic clinical trial simulation platform, “JINKO,” which provides best-in-class clinical trial simulations to predict drug efficacy and optimize clinical trial development. The platform runs disease models in virtual patients to support decision-making and reduce clinical development risks.

Meanwhile, these funds will help NOVA expand into the U.S. market and collaborate with Sanofi to develop COVID-19 disease models. JINKO’s workflow design closely mirrors real-world clinical studies, offering a comprehensive suite of applications from discovery to market access.

Additionally, Isabelle Vitali, Global Head of Digital Innovation at Sanofi, will join the Board of Directors of NOVA.

NOVA Introduction: Disease modeling and clinical trial simulations are increasingly being used in drug development to support decision-making. An effective COVID-19 disease model could bring significant benefits, as society strives to address new viral strains and mutations, the complexity of infection pathophysiology, and uncertainties surrounding changes to vaccination administration schedules.

Nova, headquartered in Lyon, France, has been working with medical regulatory authorities to incorporate the technology of its research platform (also known as “electronic data”) into regulatory filings. Sanofi has now joined this collaboration and will leverage Nova’s expertise to help build a COVID-19 disease model, supporting vaccine and therapeutic efforts against the epidemic for the population in France.

Previously, Sanofi and its partner GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) released relatively “underwhelming” data results in the late-2020 COVID-19 vaccine development race, forcing the two companies to postpone their vaccine development efforts to the fourth quarter of this year.

In the initial data, the COVID-19 vaccines from the two pharmaceutical companies failed to elicit the expected immune response in individuals aged 50 and older, forcing GSK to reconsider its antigen formulation. Sanofi hopes that its second attempt will succeed, with the support of the Nova platform.

For Nova, this investment partnership expands its growing pharmaceutical client base. In December 2020, Nova entered into an agreement with Janssen Pharmaceuticals (France) regarding its electronic data platform. Janssen is developing both single-dose and two-dose COVID-19 vaccines. Although the Nova agreement does not explicitly state that it is assisting Janssen in this specific R&D effort, it is reasonable to infer, based on its collaboration with Sanofi, that Janssen may also be involved in this area.

Reference Source:

1.Sanofi invests in health tech firm Novadiscovery, boosting trial simulation platform and COVID-19 work

2.Novadiscovery raises Series A2 financing from Sanofi to advance JINKO, its best-in-class clinical trial simulation platform