BioCentury
ARTICLE | Strategy

sanofi rolls the bones

April 14, 2011 7:00 AM UTC

sanofi-aventis Group has seized an early stage opportunity that opened up when Biogen Idec Inc. recently refocused on neurology, by picking up an obesity and type 2 diabetes program centered on osteocalcin that was previously held by a Biogen incubator company. sanofi is funding external research to identify a receptor responsible for the hormone's metabolic effects and is internally devising strategies to develop osteocalcin or osteocalcin agonists as therapeutics.

In 2007, a team at Columbia University made the surprising discovery that the bone-derived hormone osteocalcin regulates glucose homeostasis in mice.1 The researchers showed that animals treated with osteocalcin had lower blood glucose levels and greater insulin sensitivity than controls,2 which suggested that osteocalcin or osteocalcin agonists could be used to treat patients with metabolic syndrome...