‘There are mo­ments’: Sanofi’s new CEO is think­ing through the R&D strat­e­gy — and on­col­o­gy will be key

PARIS — “When you vis­it sci­ence, every­thing looks per­fect,” says Sanofi’s new­ly named CEO Paul Hud­son, who’s been on the job all of about a month now. “It smells of fresh paint.”

But in a world where every­thing looks fresh and new and in­no­v­a­tive, where all com­pa­nies boast about be­ing unique and cut­ting edge, those poignant oc­ca­sions when some­thing tru­ly spe­cial leaps out at you can be rare. And he tells a sto­ry of meet­ing a sci­en­tist at Sanofi’s R&D or­ga­ni­za­tion — the Har­vard-trained Vir­ginia Savo­va — who had been work­ing on new AI tech­nol­o­gy that an­a­lyzes sam­ples from au­toim­mune pa­tients that can be used to ex­am­ine sin­gle im­mune cells. Fol­low that trail, and it can lead you to some new places in med­i­cine. Places Sanofi wants to go.

“There are mo­ments,” says the CEO. And he wants more of them. A lot more.

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