Sanofi-aventis has signed a global strategic alliance with Avila Therapeutics that is worth more than US$800 M, including US$40 M upfront and as much as US$770 M in milestone payments. Sanofi-aventis will have access to Avila’s proprietary Avilomics™ platform that offers a unique approach to ‘protein silencing’. The companies will collaborate to discover targeted covalent drugs against six signalling proteins involved in cancer, with Sanofi-aventis gaining a worldwide exclusive licence to the compounds resulting from the collaboration. Avila has the option to retain rights to one of the six programmes after the initial 3-year term of the collaboration.