As New Sanofi CEO starts, Viehbacher’s Biotech Fingerprints Abound
Alex Lash
After the abrupt firing of former CEO Chris Viehbacher final fall, Sanofi (NYSE: SNY) has ultimately named a brand new chief executive. The Paris-primarily based international pharma has tapped for the job native Frenchman Olivier Brandicourt (pictured), the present prime executive of Bayer Healthcare.
On April 2, Brandicourt takes the reins of an organization with roughly the identical market price as Bayer. within the $ a hundred and fifteen billion to $ one hundred thirty billion range, both are half the size of healthcare giants Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), Novartis (NYSE: NVS), and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ).
Sanofi leans heavily on its franchise of diabetes products, a neighborhood subject to difficult competitors from the likes of Novo Nordisk and pricing threats from payers. The day before he used to be ousted with the aid of the board, Viehbacher had announced that the diabetes franchise would no longer grow in 2015.
Sanofi chairman Serge Weinberg informed Bloomberg business lately that Bandricourt will focal point on product launches in 2015 and past, with the U.S. “high on the priority list.”
beneath Viehbacher, a German-Canadian, Sanofi made a series of daring biotech bets—lots of them in Boston, the place Viehbacher stated in 2014 very publicly he would transfer. crimson Sox proprietor John Henry welcomed the news. but it reinforced fears among French employees and politicians that Sanofi, a conglomeration of a few firms, many with deep historic French ties, would shift its middle of gravity further towards the U.S. and far from France.
Brandicourt will likely be based in Paris, according to Weinberg. It remains to be viewed if he continues the identical aggressive deal-making, and if so, where he places his bets. here are Sanofi’s biotech highlights of recent years:
—The whopper was once Sanofi’s $ 20 billion purchase of Genzyme in 2011 after months of fight. other massive pharmas have dabbled in uncommon disease construction, or even made surgical strikes for products and smaller companies. however the midsize Sanofi bet an important sum on Genzyme for its enzyme alternative drugs and other products in oncology, autoimmune disease, and tissue repair. (The oncology crew just lately introduced job cuts amid a broader restructuring.)
—sooner than the Genzyme acquisition, Sanofi inked in 2009 a complicated, lengthy-time period collaboration with Tarrytown, the big apple-based totally Regeneron prescription drugs (NASDAQ: REGN). It used to be an extension of an ongoing partnership—with Sanofi already proudly owning 19.9 p.c of Regeneron—and introduced an bold purpose to put 20 to 30 antibody merchandise into medical trials by way of 2017. Sanofi agreed to pay $ 160 million in annual R&D fees to Regeneron throughout that duration. In impact, the deal put Sanofi’s antibody building into the fingers of one company. the marriage has paid off so far, with their one industrial product, aflibercept (Zaltrap), licensed for metastatic colon most cancers. (In a different type, aflibercept has additionally been licensed for eye diseases—but with Bayer as the promoting companion.)
a bigger payoff could come later this 12 months, with Sanofi and Regeneron ready on a July regulatory choice to approve alirocumab (Praluent), a cholesterol-reducing therapy anticipated to compete heavily in a big market.
—one in all Sanofi’s biggest bets on a biotech startup was once its 2012 maintain Warp force Bio, of Cambridge, MA. It joined with 1/3 Rock Ventures and Greylock companions to put $ one hundred twenty five million into Warp pressure, and agreed to purchase the startup at an undisclosed, prenegotiated price if certain milestones had been met. Warp drive, which developed an engine to sequence the genomes of microbes hidden in vegetation and soil, has made little information in view that that announcement. Harvard university chemical biologist Greg Verdine was once named CEO in July 2013.
—In early 2014, Genzyme made a $ 700 million investment in Cambridge-primarily based Alnylam pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY) to clutch partial rights to a couple of of Alnylam’s RNA interference medicine for rare illnesses. That deal integrated rights in Europe to Alnylam’s most evolved prospect, patisiran, which is in segment three testing.
—closing week, Genzyme attached with Cambridge, MA-based totally Voyager Therapeutics, paying $ a hundred million upfront to pursue gene cures for a few neurological diseases. Genzyme’s gene treatment work stretches back greater than twenty years.
—-during the last few years, Sanofi has additionally made various offers with and investments in biotech startups like South San Francisco, CA-based totally MyoKardia, Cambridge-primarily based Unum Therapeutics, and Selecta Biosciences.
—Ben Fidler contributed to this record
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