Sanofi merges biology and tech with research deal for digital asthma lab

Sanofi plans to take asthma research where it has not gone before. A new partnership with Mount Sinai Health System and advanced analytics firm Sema4 will create a digital asthma laboratory where sophisticated digital technology can be applied to and used to gather new forms of real-world and clinical data for analysis and predictive action. The five-year study will follow 1,200 people living with different types of asthma, capturing real-world information such as Bluetooth-enabled inhaler and spirometer data, daily movements via GPS and genomic data from blood and nasal brushing samples, along with patient-reported outcomes.
Sanofi and its partners plan to then analyze the data using artificial intelligence to identify commonalities such as digital biomarkers that might signal an attack or to create personal molecular pathways of different people with asthma. The study breaks from traditional epidemiologic studies and clinical trials in its linking of new kinds of real-world data, enabled by Bluetooth and GPS, for example, to advanced analytics with and for patients, Frank Nestle, Sanofi North America global head of immunology and inflammation research and chief scientific officer, said.