Selecta Biosciences, a Watertown, Mass.-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing a new class of synthetic vaccines and immunotherapies, has entered into a strategic global collaboration with global healthcare company Sanofi to discover highly targeted, antigen-specific immunotherapies for life-threatening allergies.

Sanofi obtains an exclusive license to develop an immunotherapy designed to abate acute immune responses against a life threatening food allergen and an option to develop two additional candidate immunotherapies for allergies each to a specific food or aeroallergen. The products resulting from this collaboration will leverage Selecta's proprietary Synthetic Vaccine Particle (SVP) platform which is capable of engineering nanoparticles with the ideal structure and composition to produce immune tolerance by balancing the overactive response to specific allergy-causing antigens.

In addition, Selecta is eligible to receive several pre-clinical, clinical, regulatory and sales milestones totaling $300 million per allergen indication for up to three immunotherapy candidates contemplated by this collaboration. Selecta is also entitled to up to double-digit tiered royalties as percentage of product net sales for each commercialized immunotherapy.

"We are very pleased that Sanofi, a global leader in vaccines and immunology, is entering into a partnership with Selecta to develop and commercialize products from our immunotherapy platform," said Werner Cautreels, PhD, president and CEO of Selecta. "In allergies, as well as auto-immune diseases, organ transplantation  and protein replacement therapies, there is a lack of specific, effective and safe treatments to prevent undesired immune reactions. Selecta's SVP technology can restore balance to dysregulated immune systems by producing immune tolerance to specific antigens. Our approach addresses the underlying causes of these diseases and thereby makes advances beyond today's symptomatic treatments and allergen avoidance strategies."

The collaboration is aligned with Sanofi's strategic focus areas in immunology and leverages Sanofi's Boston-based research and development capabilities.