Sanofi Sanofi has agreed a deal to buy out its partner, US biotech company Principia Biopharma for USD 3.7 billion in cash, giving the French giant full ownership of Principia’s pipeline of BTK inhibitors for autoimmune disorders.   The deal, whereby Sanofi is set to pay USD 100 a share to…

Sanofi With former head David Loew moving to the CEO position at Ipsen, Sanofi appointed French national Thomas Triomphe as the new head of its vaccines business unit, Sanofi Pasteur, on June 15th 2020.    Under the watch of CEO Paul Hudson, appointed at the end of 2019, Sanofi has initiated…

USA French firm LFB is targeting the lucrative US market with its hemophilia products and recently received two FDA approvals. Although launching new products in the midst of a global pandemic is not without challenges, LFB USA CEO Jose Antonio Moreno Toscano is optimistic that the launches will be a success…

France French pharma giant Sanofi is pivoting its focus to invest more heavily in vaccines with a plan to invest USD 679 million in vaccine manufacturing operations in the next two years. This announcement came shortly after news of further rounds of layoffs of research staff working on cardiovascular diseases and…

France David Loew, formerly executive vice president of Sanofi Pasteur, Sanofi’s vaccines division, was appointed CEO of fellow French firm Ipsen on the 28th May 2020, effective 1st July.   Loew, who spoke to PharmaBoardroom in January 2019 while in position at Sanofi Pasteur, is taking the helm from Aymeric Le…

Europe Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel recently put their heads together to come up with a health strategy that would ensure greater European access to innovative medicines and COVID-19 treatments.   The so-called “power couple” – German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Emmanuel Macron –  presented a jointly developed five-point…

Coronavirus In a recent interview with Financial Times, Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson set out to clarify some recent comments that the US would get priority access to a COVID-19 vaccine. He explained the firm’s collaboration with US research group BARDA and underscored that Sanofi is committed to bringing vaccines to all…

Coronavirus The world’s two leading vaccine producers, GSK of the UK and France’s Sanofi, last week announced that they are working together to develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19); an unprecedented agreement that shows the scale of the challenge facing the global biopharmaceutical industry and possibly provides the world’s…

France Researchers at the Institut Pasteur in Paris have become the first in Europe to fully sequence the genome of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus – putting the Institut at the forefront of developing a vaccine for the virus.   As of the 4th February 2020, the Coronavirus 2019-nCoV, originating in the Chinese…

France These are worrying times for iconic French mid-cap Ipsen. Trials for palovarotene, a treatment for rare bone disorders, have been plagued by setbacks, perhaps contributing to erstwhile CEO David Meek’s decision to quit the firm in December 2019. The company’s share price has since plummeted.   Meek’s resignation to join…

France France is home to the highest rates of vaccine mistrust in Europe, with a third of French people disagreeing that vaccines are safe, according to the Wellcome Global Monitor survey. However, the country is aiming to shed its reputation for vaccine hesitancy and roll out increased mandatory vaccinations for a…

France With Minister of the Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, emphasizing the importance of “winning the battle on data” and eccentric mathematician Cédric Villani, well in the process of drawing up a national strategy on artificial intelligence (AI) in his capacity as Chargé de Mission, there is little doubting the…