October 7, 2009, Seoul, S. Korea - Institut Pasteur Korea (IPK) and sanofi-aventis Research & Development in Toulouse, France have entered into a Research Agreement for the identification of safe and effective new treatments for patients suffering from Tuberculosis.

The resulting partnership will combine IPK’s expertise in high throughput and high content visual screening approaches for the acceleration of drug discovery with sanofi-aventis’ proprietary chemical compound library.

Concretely, IPK will utilize its PhenomicScreen™ target free technological platform to look for active yet non toxic agents that block bacteria replication and infection. This phenotypic approach allows for the cell itself to identify the most effective drug target out of the many complex molecular interactions underlying the development of a given disease. In addition, PhenomicScreen™ has the advantage of being able to reflect specific disease physiologies and enable the assessment of biological events live and in real time.

Ulf Nehrbass, Chief Executive Officer of Institut Pasteur Korea said, “After pioneering our innovative drug discovery approach over the last 5 years, the collaboration with a global healthcare leading company on our core Phenomic technology marks a significant milestone. Together we can find new compounds and new targets against tuberculosis faster and more effectively.”

Laurent Fraisse, responsible for infectious diseases research at sanofi-aventis added, “This agreement gives us the access to the best up to date technologies for screening compounds against M.tuberculosis, one of the top 3 killing infectious diseases with AIDS and Malaria. Discover and develop new treatments against tuberculosis is a clear priority for our company.”

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About Tuberculosis (TB)
Tuberculosis is still a major threat to global health with 8 million new infections each year resulting in more than 2 million deaths worldwide. TB in humans is usually caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and treatment of an infected individual requires more than six months of chemotherapy consisting of a cocktail of at least four drugs: rifampin, isoniazid, pyrazinamide and ethambutol. Since such a long course of treatment is required and compliance to the treatment regimen is low, which can result in the development of multidrug resistant strains (MDR-TB) and even extremely resistant strains (XDR-TB), new compounds that target different aspects of the mycobacterial life cycle and that will not require such lengthy administration are needed.

About sanofi-aventis
Sanofi-aventis, a leading global pharmaceutical company, discovers, develops, and distributes therapeutic solutions to improve the lives of everyone. Sanofi-aventis is listed in Paris (EURONEXT PARIS: SAN) and in New York (NYSE: SNY).

About Institut Pasteur Korea
Institut Pasteur Korea is a non-profit organization based in South Korea. It was founded in April, 2004 with the strategic focus of enabling technologies and therapeutic development in disease models pertaining to public health. For additional information please visit http://www.ip-korea.org.

Media Contacts
Sinae Bae, PR Officer, Institut Pasteur Korea : 82-31-8018-8050, sinae@ip-korea.org
Sun Young Kim, PR Director, sanofi-aventis Korea, 02-527-7710, 010-5334-4921,
Jihee Kim, PR Manager, sanofi-aventis Korea: 02-527-5501, 010-3926-0117