Sanofi's sleeping sickness drug wins FDA OK and a lucrative priority review voucher too
The FDA on Tuesday approved the first oral treatment for sleeping sickness (human African trypanosomiasis) from Sanofi and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, and provided the partners with a priority review voucher that they may sell for about $100 million.
Sleeping sickness is a parasitic disease that’s transmitted through being bitten by tsetse flies and affects people living in remote, sub-Saharan Africa, which puts about 65 million people at risk of infection. But Sanofi has been able to drastically reduce the number of sleeping sickness cases in sub-Saharan Africa by about 97% from 2001 and 2020, and fexinidazole, its oral-only drug, offers an advantage over other sleeping sickness treatments that require infusions or injections, and which are challenging to administer to patients in remote parts of Africa.
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