Sanofi has tapped ScionxBio, a startup roughly three months out of its parent company, for work on long acting RNA medicines, Endpoints News reported on October 19. No financial terms, target list or deal structure had been disclosed by either company at the time of this edition, and neither Sanofi nor ScionxBio had issued a release carrying the partnership.
ScionxBio was launched in July 2026 as the drug development half of a split of Eleven Therapeutics, the AI and combinatorial chemistry RNA company co-founded by Yaniv Erlich and Adi Gilboa-Geffen. Gilboa-Geffen, Eleven’s former chief technology officer, leads ScionxBio as chief executive. The company’s modality is xRNA: RNA molecules engineered on its TERA platform, which combines combinatorial chemistry with deep learning models, for structural stability and resistance to enzymatic degradation. ScionxBio says a single xRNA administration has produced sustained protein expression lasting weeks rather than days in its preclinical work. Its therapeutic focus is cardiometabolic disease, where chronic conditions mean lifetime dosing schedules and where the company argues long acting expression can cut dosing frequency, exposure peaks and accumulated immunogenic risk. The other half of the Eleven split, Undecimal Bio, kept the siRNA delivery platform and raised an 18 million dollar seed round in October.
For Sanofi, the interest fits a visible pattern of buying optionality in next generation RNA formats alongside its established mRNA and antibody franchises. For ScionxBio, a large pharma signature this early is the platform’s first external validation event, ahead of any clinical data.
The sourcing discipline governs how far this story can go. The partnership itself rests on a single trade report, the terms are unknown, and platform deals at this stage range from small research collaborations to substantial licences. The story is carried as reported, flagged here, and graded C until a company disclosure puts structure on the record.