The buzz this morn­ing is that Sanofi $SNY is mov­ing ahead steadi­ly on work­ing out a deal to buy Acte­lion. And Bloomberg re­ports that the phar­ma gi­ant has brought out its fa­vorite M&A tool — the CVR, or con­tin­gent val­ue right shares — to get the job done with­out hand­ing over too large a pre­mi­um.

Sanofi ob­servers will well re­mem­ber that the CVR is what clinched the $20 bil­lion deal for Gen­zyme. But those CVRs are now trad­ing at 38 cents af­ter Sanofi, not known for a very ef­fec­tive in-house R&D group, failed to hit any of the big mile­stones it laid out for in­vestors. Orig­i­nal­ly val­ued at $5.58, or $3.8 bil­lion, the CVR {GCVRZ} was built around Lem­tra­da, which was ini­tial­ly re­ject­ed by the FDA, de­rail­ing the com­mer­cial­iza­tion time­line. And that re­jec­tion was fol­lowed up with a law­suit.

The drug was fi­nal­ly ap­proved in late 2014 and went on to post dis­ap­point­ing 2015 sales, fur­ther dam­ag­ing the CVR.

Jean-Paul Clozel

Nev­er­the­less, Bloomberg re­ports that a CVR may be just what Acte­lion CEO Jean-Paul Clozel needs to give up his well known pref­er­ence for in­de­pen­dence. Clozel has seen off sev­er­al would-be suit­ors and ac­tivist in­vest­ment groups push­ing a sale. J&J $JNJ was the last to go a few days ago, of­fi­cial­ly sign­ing out of the deal room but re­port­ed­ly keep­ing an eye on the progress Sanofi makes on a buy­out that could weigh in around $30 bil­lion.

One rea­son why Sanofi would pre­fer a CVR is that Clozel has been the com­pa­ny’s biggest pipeline fan. He is par­tic­u­lar­ly pumped about the MS drug pones­i­mod — a sphin­go­sine-1-phos­phate 1 re­cep­tor ag­o­nist — just as Gen­zyme’s Hen­ri Ter­meer was pumped about Lem­tra­da. Sanofi is al­so well past its $20 bil­lion self-im­posed lim­i­ta­tion on new ac­qui­si­tions, which will fur­ther add to the at­trac­tive­ness of a CVR. But af­ter los­ing Medi­va­tion to Pfiz­er, Sanofi CEO Olivi­er Brandi­court needs to pro­duce a deal to help ap­pease in­vestors as its di­a­betes fran­chise wanes.

Sanofi’s bleak CVR past, cur­rent R&D ef­fort — as dis­tinct from its col­lab­o­ra­tions with Re­gen­eron — and trou­bled fu­ture are like­ly to keep Clozel fo­cused on the cash. The phar­ma gi­ant’s promis­es on re­search and CVRs look pret­ty thin at this stage.

Following a promise last year to go “big and fast in breast cancer,” Gilead has secured a win for Trodelvy in the most common form.

The drug was approved to treat HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer patients who’ve already received endocrine-based therapy and at least two other systemic therapies for metastatic cancer, Gilead announced on Friday.

Trodelvy won its first indication in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer back in 2020, and has since added urothelial cancer to the list. HR-positive HER2-negative breast cancer accounts for roughly 70% of new breast cancer cases worldwide per year, according to senior VP of oncology clinical development Bill Grossman, and many patients develop resistance to endocrine-based therapies or worsen on chemotherapy.

Sanofi expects its RSV antibody jointly developed with AstraZeneca will be available next season, executive VP of vaccines Thomas Triomphe announced on the company’s quarterly call.

Beyfortus, also known as nirsevimab, was approved in the EU back in November and is currently under FDA review with an expected decision coming in the third quarter of this year. The news comes as the FDA plans to hold advisory committee meetings over the next couple months to review RSV vaccines from Pfizer and GSK.