We need your help now
Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
By continuing, you are indicating that you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
GOOGLE ANNOUNCED ITS plans to reorganize under the name Alphabet just three weeks ago.
Since then, it’s wasted no time getting its life sciences unit graduated from under Google X and prepped to join Alphabet as a standalone company.
Today, Google Life Sciences entered a partnership with Sanofi, a European pharmaceutical company, to develop technologies to treat diabetes.
The partnership reinforces Google Life Sciences interest in the disease. In the past, Google has started working on technology such as contact lenses that monitor glucose levels to find ways to make living with the disease easier.
Diabetes affects 371 million people worldwide, a number that’s expected to increase to 552 million by 2030.
Paris-based Sanofi has been a leader in diabetes treatments. It currently makes a number of insulin medications along with devices to administer them.
Sanofi said in a news release that it’s interested in Google’s “analytics, miniaturized electronics and low power chip design.” Google has been developing smart contact lenses — a project that was announced back in January 2014 — that include a glucose monitor to keep track of blood sugar levels in the body.
This sounds like handy technology for a company that mainly sticks with treatments to administer insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas that allows your body to use the sugar (or glucose) in the food you eat.
This isn’t Google Life Sciences’ first partnership with a major pharmaceutical company: They’ve been partnering with Novartis eye care division to make smart contact lenses, and Biogen to develop technologies to treat multiple sclerosis.
“With Sanofi, we can complete the picture of how diabetes unfolds and try to interrupt that development through a proactive and preventive approach,” Life Sciences’ CEO Andy Conrad told the Wall Street Journal.
The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the partnership.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Certainly better than needling fingers all day long. About time we progressed.
Interesting, the U.S. Government ran a competition recently for a device to monitor blood alcohol realtime, sounds like a similar technology..
Splitting Google up and putting it as a subsidiary of Alphabet is the best thing they could have done. They’re now free to spin off all of their ventures into their own companies with their own employees, CEO’s and stocks. They were rather restricted from doing too much under the Google umbrella. Trying to explain to stock holders why you’re spending billions of dollars researching ways to stop death in the Google X Labs and how that’s going to make them money at the end of the year mustn’t have been easy.
have your say