Sanofi iDEA-TECH Awards North America 2024-2025

Ideas must be submitted using the provided Pre-proposal template and sent to the Stanford Medicine - Industry Relations (SM-IR) Team (austinaker@stanford.edu and zuzannaz@stanford.edu) by December 3rd, 2024.

Sanofi is a global pharmaceutical company committed to improving access to healthcare and supporting the patients we serve throughout the continuum of care. The Sanofi iDEA-TECH Awards initiative is designed to innovate through collaborations, with a focus on cutting-edge digital and data tools and new technologies for R&D applications. Sanofi’s main objectives in creating the iDEA-TECH Awards program are to rapidly start one-year projects that maximize the opportunity for continued collaborations of mutual interest. The goal is to:

• Identify new projects and help develop new approaches and translational technologies from key academic institutions and start-ups
• De-risk cutting-edge science and technologies that can bring high potential value to R&D
• Build strong relationships with new partners that can lead to longer-term partnerships

Award Information

Each selected Investigator will receive up to $150K USD total costs, have a dedicated Sanofi scientific expert assigned to the project for 1-year and gain privileged access to developing an extended collaboration. Indirect costs, at the full Stanford negotiated rate, are already inclusive in the $150,000 award value specified. The award cannot be used to fund a clinical trial.

Eligibility

Stanford faculty with PI eligibility and CE faculty (with an approved CE faculty PI waiver). CE applicants must obtain an approved CE faculty PI waiver BEFORE the pre-proposal deadline. Stanford postdocs, graduate students, and research staff are not eligible to apply.

Instructions for CE faculty PI waiver requests: Submit the required, completed CE faculty PI waiver template and attachments directly to Kathleen Thompson at klt@stanford.edu before Noon Pacific time on Monday, November 25, 2024. Please do not contact your RPM/RMG or CGO/OSR regarding waivers for this program.                

Program Guidelines

Sanofi iDEA-iTECH Awards North America

See attached Call for Pre-proposals for the Scope of the Call. This is confidential and not to be shared outside of Stanford University.

Areas of Interest (for more details, please click on the Program Guidelines link above and review the attached Call for Pre-proposals).

• Evidence Generation and Decision Science (EGDS)
• Health Value Translation (HVT)
• Precision Medicine & Computational Biology (PMCB)
• Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics (DMPK)
• Integrated Drug Discovery (IDD)
• Large Molecule Research (LMR)
• Translational Models (TIMs)
• Pre-Clinical Safety (PCS)
• Vaccines
• Genomic Medicine (GMU)
• Chemistry Manufacturing and Controls (CMC)

Timeline for Pre-Proposals 

November 25, 2024 (Noon Pacific time) - CE faculty PI Waiver requests due, if applicable  
December 3, 2024 (11:59 PM Pacific time) - Internal deadline to submit pre-proposals to Stanford Medicine Industry Relations (SM-IR)
February 3, 2025 - Notification for which pre-proposals have been selected for detailed proposals 

Selected pre-proposals will need to be developed further into full, detailed proposals and reviewed for final selection by Sanofi. Anticipated start of selected projects is November 3, 2025. 

Submission Instructions for Pre-Proposal

Ideas must be submitted using the provided Pre-proposal template (attached) and sent to the Stanford Medicine - Industry Relations (SM-IR) Team: Austin Aker (austinaker@stanford.edu) and Zuzanna Zapiorkowska (zuzannaz@stanford.edu) by December 3rd, 2024. SM-IR Team will work with Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing (OTL)/Industrial Contracts Office (ICO) to make sure that your proposal is aligned with the scope and fulfills the application criteria of the call. Pre-proposals that are not validated by your institution OTL (for academic PIs) or do not fit with the guidelines (format, timeline, etc.) will not be evaluated. Please note that pre-proposals must not contain any confidential information or unpublished results and cannot include 3rd party collaborators other than those involved in the iDEA-TECH Awards initiative. Once aligned upon, the SM-IR Team will ensure the pre-proposals are submitted through the iDEA-TECH portal link by December 12th, 2024.

There should be NO confidential information disclosed in the pre-proposals. 

Institutional representative: you do not need to submit pre-proposals through RMG or OSR for institutional approval; you may submit your pre-proposal directly to SM-IR per the instructions above. If invited to submit a full proposal, please initiate your Proposal Intake Form (PIF) at your earliest convenience. Final proposal submission will require institutional approval prior to submission.

Questions? Should you have any further question regarding the initiative, application, selection process, scope, etc. please contact: SRI-NA@sanofi.com and include Austin Aker (austinaker@stanford.edu) and Zuzanna Zapiorkowska (zuzannaz@stanford.edu) in the copy of the email.